Responding to COVID-19: Global Accountability Report 3 – September to December 2020
April 29, 2021Over the course of 2020, COVID-19 thrust the world into a severe global health crisis. The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 put a tremendous strain on healthcare systems in low- and high-resource settings alike, as large numbers of patients with potentially life-threatening...
Read moreMSF resumes activities in response to India’s COVID-19 second wave
April 24, 2021Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is restarting emergency response amid a surging second wave of COVID-19 in Mumbai in Maharashtra. The city is very densely populated and the poor and dilapidated hygiene conditions are a triple trigger for the...
Read moreBrazil: Failed COVID-19 response drives Brazil to humanitarian catastrophe
April 16, 2021More than 12 months into Brazil’s COVID-19 emergency, there is still no effective, centralised and coordinated public health response to the outbreak. The lack of political will to adequately respond to the pandemic is killing Brazilians in their thousands. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)...
Read moreYemen: COVID-19 support desperately needed as second wave overwhelms the country
March 25, 2021ADEN – Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is seeing a dramatic influx of critically ill COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalisation in Aden, Yemen and many other parts of the country. “We are urging all medical humanitarian organisations already present in Yemen to rapidly scale up...
Read morePalestine: Vaccines urgently needed as Palestine struggles under surge of COVID-19
March 24, 2021Since February, another heavy wave of COVID-19 has swept through the West Bank, Palestine. Over 20,000 patients are currently being treated for the new coronavirus, adding further pressure to an already fragile healthcare system, and leaving medical staff struggling to provide adequate care. Both...
Read moreCOVID-19: One year of a pandemic
March 11, 2021Opinion by Brice de le Vingne, head, MSF emergency desk One year ago, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. At Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – where providing medical care during...
Read moreA year of a pandemic: our response to COVID-19 in pictures
March 11, 2021On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, a worldwide pandemic. Since January 2020, MSF teams around the world have been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, in both countries where we've previously worked,...
Read moreIraq: Severe COVID-19 patients in Iraq “were almost sure to die”
February 17, 2021At the end of July 2020 in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, something strange started happening. In hospitals across the city, the doctors and nurses sweating in the Iraqi summer heat noticed that while their COVID-19 intensive care units were ever full, the...
Read moreBrazil: COVID-19 disaster unfolding in Amazon
February 12, 2021MSF teams struggle to keep up as COVID-19 cases surge, health system collapses NEW YORK/RIO DE JANEIRO —The descent into a second COVID-19 catastrophe in Brazil’s Amazon region is now unfolding in the Amazonas State capital, Manaus, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors...
Read moreAfghanistan: Keeping an eye on COVID-19 cases in Herat
February 12, 2021Due to an increase in the number of people with severe COVID-19 in Herat, western Afghanistan, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) COVID-19 treatment centre in Gazer Ga reopened on 2 December 2020. The centre reopened to support the Ministry of Public...
Read moreMSF to wealthy countries: Don’t block and ruin the potential of a landmark waiver on monopolies during the pandemic
February 3, 2021Geneva, Switzerland — Ahead of the next round of talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to discuss a proposal by South Africa and India to waive monopolies on COVID-19 medical tools during the pandemic, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders...
Read moreThe knock-on effects of COVID-19
February 2, 2021From Latin America to Africa and from Asia to Europe, the pandemic has cost millions of lives. At the same time, it has affected people’s ability to access essential health services. In many places, the devastating knock-on effects of the...
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