Photo Essay: Care in conflict

Providing medical care in situations of armed conflict presents extraordinary challenges. It means not just conducting emergency medicine under difficult conditions, but also navigating insecurity, logistical constraints, population movements and the many cascading effects of violence, while aiming to maintain safe and effective operations. Every conflict situation is different, which for humanitarians means always being ready to adapt to shifting circumstances.

An MSF physiotherapist Ibtihal (right) fits a 3D mask on a little boy — In MSF’s Gaza City clinic, MSF physiotherapist Ibtihal (right) fits a 3D mask on Joud, a four-year-old affected by burns, as the boy’s mother helps, April 2026. Facial burn patients require specialised pressure therapy masks, which prevent thick, heavy scarring and contractures that can impair breathing, movement and facial function. MSF has been the only provider of 3D-printed physiotherapy masks in Gaza since 2020, but since December 2025, we've been unable to get new supplies into Gaza. © Nour Alsaqqa/MSF

In an operating room at MSF’s Tabarre trauma hospital in Haiti, an MSF doctor performs surgery on a patient wounded by a gunshot in Port-au-Prince, January 2026. Last year, MSF teams in Haiti performed 8,469 surgical procedures, treated 3,419 people for violence-related injuries, and conducted 19,819 physical therapy sessions. In May this year, we were forced to evacuate and suspend operations in the Cité Soleil neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, following more than 24 hours of heavy clashes between armed groups. © Marx Stanley Léveillé/MS

MSF staff offload relief items transported by UN helicopter in Chuil, Jonglei State, South Sudan, March 2026. Escalating violence in Jonglei state, including the 3 February bombing of MSF’s hospital in Lankien, forced MSF to suspend medical activities in Lankien and Pieri. At least 25,000 people sought refuge in the small town of Chuil, where MSF upgraded the healthcare centre, increasing capacity to 60 beds to provide emergency care, treatment for malnutrition, maternal health services, and to stabilise trauma cases. © Isaac Buay/MSF

Hanna Dudnyk (left), MSF emergency doctor, and paramedic Nadiia Toka take care of an 84-year-old patient just admitted by ambulance at one of the hospitals in Mykolaiv region, in southern Ukraine, where the front line is about seven kilometres away. Unable to answer what was bothering her, the woman was admitted to hospital for testing. This medical facility, supported by MSF medical teams since April 2025, has continued operating despite being desperately understaffed, providing assistance in a region where many health facilities have closed and large numbers of qualified doctors have left for safer places. © Mariia Nahorna/MSF

MSF staff member Dália Paulo gives prescribed medicines to patients after consultations at an MSF mobile clinic in Alua Velha, Eráti District, in Mozambique’s Nampula province, December 2025. More than 300,000 people were forcibly displaced in Nampula in the second half of 2025, part of a broader humanitarian crisis caused by the eight-year-long conflict in Cabo Delgado province, which has periodically spilled over into neighbouring provinces, including Nampula. © Sofia Minetto/MSF

In Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan, MSF surgeon Dr Mubarak attaches an intravenous line before operating on a 14-year-old boy, 1 March 2026. The boy was wounded while fleeing the besieged city of El-Fasher in October 2025. Dr. Mubarak is also displaced from the city, where he worked at El-Fasher’s Saudi Hospital during the height of the fighting, as doctors continued treating the wounded despite near-daily attacks on medical facilities. With hospitals in El-Fasher damaged or forced to close, MSF teams in Tawila now treat civilians suffering from gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries and other war trauma linked to Sudan’s ongoing conflict. © Giles Clarke/MSF

MSF mobile unit in Beirut — MSF mobile unit providing support to displaced families in a shelter in Beirut, 26 March 2026. Within a month, Lebanon experienced the displacement of more than 1 million people. Waves of rain and cold weather made conditions even more challenging for people sheltering in plastic tents or open areas. MSF teams mobilised since the escalation of conflict began, providing support through more than 18 mobile units. We also distributed water, food, blankets, and tents, and supplied fuel and medical items to several hospitals. Simultaneously, our teams ran a water and sanitation intervention to meet urgent needs, including installing water tanks and latrines, rehabilitating water infrastructure, and trucking clean water to dilapidated shelters across the country. © Maryam Srour/MSF

art-based psychosocial support program for children — At the Azarieh shelter in Beirut, Lebanon, children participate in an art-based psychosocial support program run by an MSF mobile clinic. Ongoing Israeli military operations and airstrikes, and repeated displacement have taken a heavy psychological toll on people in Lebanon, particularly on children. Sleep disturbances, anxiety, withdrawal, negative behavioral changes, and difficulty concentrating, are a few of the challenges parents share with our mental health teams. Many children struggle to articulate fear, grief, and longing, especially in environments where adults themselves are overwhelmed and focused on day-to-day survival and coping. For them, feelings and experiences they don’t fully understand often surface indirectly in the way they play, behave, or the images they draw, rather than speech. © Emin Ozmen/Magnum Photos

Mothers sit with their children in a malnutrition ward at the Masisi General Reference Hospital, in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, September 2025. Malnutrition, in part the result of armed conflict, negatively impacts on health maternal and neonatal mortality rates. MSF has operated in Masisi health zone since 2007. The area was taken over by the M23 armed group in a rapid offensive in January 2025. While fighting decreased considerably since the start of the year, MSF teams continued to treat large numbers of patients struck by bullets or injured by bladed weapons, as well as providing maternal and neonatal care and treatment for malnutrition. © Sam Bradpiece/MSF

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