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
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 across the region and in Al-Hol camp for displaced people, where more than 65,000 people, … Read more
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 and 20 June, according to the Ministry of Health) represent 69 per cent of all … Read more
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 with inaccurate beliefs about the disease and managing their own fears. Three months ago, when … Read more
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 the COVID-19 pandemic. With the help of our counsellors and health educators, we are helping … Read more
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), we talk to MSF workers and patients living and working on the frontline. They explain … Read more
Iraq has long suffered from war and political instability. The most recent conflict ended in 2017, when Mosul was recaptured after almost three years under the control of the Islamic State (IS) group. Three years later, the consequences of the conflicts in Mosul are still evident. One is the terrible impact on medical care, as many health facilities … Read more
GENEVA – Given the urgent global need for rapid, point-of-care diagnostic tests to deal with the continuous spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls on US diagnostics firm Cepheid to allocate its COVID-19 tests (Xpert Xpress SARS-COV2) equitably and affordably across all countries. MSF called on Cepheid to refrain from profiteering … Read more
As COVID-19 cases surge in Kyrgyzstan, especially in the capital Bishkek, rural and remote regions are bracing themselves for the virus by scaling up preventive measures, while simultaneously striving to guarantee essential medical care, especially for women and children. Despite the country’s strong health system, maintaining quality services outside big cities has suffered in recent years, as a … Read more
Four months after COVID-19 was officially declared an international pandemic, the disease has made its way into northwest Syria, with a first case confirmed on 9 July. Since then, 18 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the area. More than half of the positive cases so far are healthcare workers who were working in the few remaining … Read more