In Tbilisi, MSF emergency teams are providing medical aid to those who have fled the fighting among Russians, Ossetians, and Georgians in South Ossetia. They are chiefly offering medical attention to people in shelters, some of them very elderly.

Kalistine G. is having a hard time getting used to her new surroundings. This 82-year-old native of Georgia has been in Tbilisi for several days, where she has found refuge in an abandoned building that used to house the former Finance Ministry. She has re-joined four of her family members there, where they share a room that, in another era, was an office.

After intense fighting broke out August 7 in South Ossetia, she waited until the 17th to leave her village of Kourta, located on the outskirts Tskhinvali, the capital of this separatist province. There were only four women, each of them very elderly, remaining in a hamlet of this village, where the majority of the population is Georgian. As the days passed their relatives and neighbors left the area.                            

Kalistine’s youngest daughter fled by car on August 8 to find refuge in Tbilisi. One of her daughter-in-laws left on the 12th

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