By Aparna Iyer, Project Medical Referent, MSF Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Project in Mumbai MSF’s drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) and HIV project is located in the M-East Ward, one of the TB high-burden areas in Mumbai. During the second wave, there was a high number of COVID-19 cases being reported, about 6,000-7,000 cases a day which forced authorities … Read more
NEW YORK — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontierès (MSF) applauds the Biden-Harris Administration’s decision to support waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. Doing so will increase sufficient and timely access to these lifesaving medical tools as COVID-19 continues to ravage countries across the globe. Many of the low-income countries in which MSF operates have only received 0.3 percent of global … Read more
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
Over 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 respiratory disease required specialised care. With no effective treatments available and stocks of personal protective … 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
More 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) is urgently calling on Brazilian authorities to acknowledge the severity of the crisis and to … Read more
ADEN – 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 their COVID-19 emergency response,” says Raphael Veicht, Head of Mission of MSF in Yemen. “International … Read more
Since 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 the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authorities must immediately significantly increase efforts to slow the … Read more
Opinion 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 epidemics and pandemics is at the core of what we do – we faced dual challenges. … Read more