By Dr Gautam Harigovind, Medical Activity Manager, COVID-19 project, Mumbai Picture a thousand-bed hospital. There are 28 wards, as well as the emergency, casualty and triage areas. It’s a makeshift hospital in a huge metal tent. Walking into it the first time was a surreal experience; I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like walking … Read more
The second wave of COVID-19 in India has been devastating, with a catastrophic rise in the numbers of new infections in recent weeks. The country has now recorded over 18.7 million cases and over 208,000 deaths [1]. The outbreak of the new coronavirus is overwhelming for all healthcare providers. The situation is dire, with a lack … Read more
Doctors 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 virus to breed, infect and spread rapidly. Daily new infections across the country have reached … Read more
They walked in single file through the narrow alleyways, winding away from their tin shack in Cape Town towards the health centre. Keitu – just 11 years old – carried her baby brother on her back since their mother was too frail and could barely manage on her own. Keitu kept a close eye on … Read more
COVID-19 stresses led to a spike in violence for people living with their abusers In March 2020, to curb the spread of COVID-19, India joined several other countries around the world in imposing strict lockdown measures and redirecting health resources to meet the needs arising from the pandemic. Globally, such measures resulted in limited access to sexual and reproductive … Read more
Pune, India: Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in collaboration with Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR)- National AIDS Research Institute (NARI) and Department of Health Service, Government of Maharashtra is initiating two major clinical trials that aim at generating clinical evidence on the safety and efficacy of novel, short and all-oral regimens for the most difficult-to-treat … Read more
Governments make request to WTO for intellectual property waiver for all countries until herd immunity reached Geneva – In a landmark move, India and South Africa on 2 October asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to COVID-19 … Read more
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 is traveling in a convoy from our base in Bijapur, a small town in Chhattisgarh, … Read more
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 of Mumbai. Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is one of the most densely populated cities … Read more
