Iraq: COVID-19 outbreak in Baghdad is “very alarming”

September 24, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has become very alarming in Iraq, with the country currently reporting close to 4,000 new cases every day and around 500 deaths a week. Over the past month alone, more than 100,000 cases have been identified in the country. And...

Syria: Ten-fold increase in COVID-19 cases adds new challenges in northwest Syria

September 22, 2020

Northwest Syria is currently witnessing a sharp increase in the number of patients with COVID-19, which is now ten times higher than what it was just a month ago. As of 22 September, 640 people had tested positive for the new coronavirus in the region,...

Responding to COVID-19 pandemic in Mumbai

September 18, 2020

What We Do In response to the current COVID-19 crisis in India, MSF has restarted its emergency operations in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The city is very densely populated and the poor and dilapidated hygiene conditions are a triple trigger for the...

Central African Republic: In times of COVID-19, malaria remains the number one killer of children in CAR

September 17, 2020

The hospital in Batangafo – a town of 31,000 people, including 22,000 displaced from elsewhere in the Central African Republic – is bustling with activity. While a particular focus has been placed on infection prevention and control measures to identify and isolate...

Chhattisgarh: Providing mobile healthcare in the Indian jungle during COVID-19

September 14, 2020

Irish MSF Project Coordinator Sarah Leahy describes a day working with MSF at a mobile healthcare clinic in Bijapur, India. 'The car comes to a sudden halt. A herd of cattle blocks the road on which our mobile clinic team...

Overcrowded, dense, dilapidated… the realities of containing COVID-19 in Mumbai’s informal settlements

September 8, 2020

In late-August, India surpassed the three-million-mark of people infected by COVID-19. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country, with more than a quarter of the total. Two in three of these were in the city...

Syria: “In Al-Hol camp, almost no healthcare is available and the consequences are devastating”

August 27, 2020

As numbers of patients with COVID-19 grow in northeast Syria, the pandemic is having a knock-on impact on other health services in a region where some 700,000 people are displaced from their homes. MSF emergency manager for Syria Will Turner describes the situation...

Spain: MSF calls for urgent measures in care homes to prevent more deaths from COVID-19

August 21, 2020

BARCELONA – The horrific death toll of elderly people in care homes during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain should never happen again. It is estimated that the elderly who died in these centres (27,359 between 6 April...

Bihar: “Corona, corona, give our ball back!”

August 18, 2020

Challenges, fears and stigma of working on the frontline of COVID-19 in India. A blog by Smriti Singh* The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a unique challenge before frontline workers — it is to strike a balance between helping patients cope...

Iraq: Yazidi community suffers one crisis after another

August 10, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on the Yazidi community in the Sinjar district of northwest Iraq. Although there are not many cases recorded in the area, the restrictive measures adopted in Iraq (as in many other countries worldwide) to curb...

Bihar: Providing mental healthcare for COVID-19 patients

August 10, 2020

Medical teams at MSF's COVID-19 treatment centre in Bihar experience various challenges during the process of providing care to patients everyday. Doctors and nurses have to constantly fight not just the disease but also fear, stigma and misinformation related to...

India: On the frontline against COVID-19

August 7, 2020

In mid-June, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) opened a 100-bed COVID-19 treatment centre in Patna, the capital of Bihar state in northeast India. As coronavirus cases continue to surge across the country (1,6 million cases as of 31 July),...