Mobile clinics go where the gaps are

In many places where MSF works, people lack access to basic healthcare for a range of reasons, such as conflict, disaster, displacement, poverty, exclusion or sheer distance. As Australian nurse Shelley Cook explains, mobile clinics – flexible, quick and low-cost – are ideally suited to reaching them with medical aid. 

In late November 2025, Cyclone Senyar unleashed extreme rainfall in parts of Indonesia and caused devastating floods in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra provinces. Official figures would eventually record more than 1,000 deaths and over 130,000 people displaced across the three provinces. MSF launched an emergency response, arriving in Aceh Tamiang, a district of Aceh, on 5 December.

After floodwaters receded, 17 out of 19 health facilities in Aceh Tamiang, including 12 general healthcare centres, were left covered in heavy mud and were no longer functional.

MSF helped to clean up and reactivate two healthcare centres, distributed relief packages, and supported the District Health Office’s Emergency Operation Centre.

MSF also ran mobile clinics in eight subdistricts of Aceh Tamiang, and one subdistrict in Aceh Timur, where the team travelled by boat for five hours and camped overnight to bring care to hard-to-reach villages.

The mobile clinics had a significant impact. When the emergency response finished at the end of January this year, mobile clinic teams had treated 2,430 patients, many for upper respiratory tract infections, generalised aches and pains, and chronic hypertension. They also provided mental healthcare to 429 people to help them cope with trauma following the disaster.

Anyone following MSF’s work in recent years will likely have heard about mobile clinics. They are often highlighted in updates about projects around the world. But what are they? How do they work? What’s so special about them?

The description alone might conjure an image of a 4x4 packed with medicines and equipment rolling into a faraway community – and sometimes that might be the case. But what defines a mobile clinic is not so much the place or the structure, which can be all kinds of things – it’s really about the people in it.

In short, an MSF mobile clinic is a small team that goes to remote or hard-to-reach areas to provide essential, free primary healthcare to populations lacking access to hospitals or other medical facilities.

Teams set up basic operations to treat common diseases, offer nutritional support, and provide vaccinations, mental health consultations and other services, depending on needs identified  
and the makeup of the team. They can also refer patients for higher-level care.

Flexibility is the key – adapting to local conditions, figuring out how to get to people and providing essential care. Mobile clinics are often deployed in conflict or post-disaster situations as a way – often the only way – for underserved communities to access healthcare.

“It’s a perfect model, because it fills a gap that we can’t fill any other way,” says Shelley Cook, an Australian nurse who returned home in February from Sudan, where she was a project medical referent based in White Nile state. “There are different models, and you fit the model to what the need is where you are. It’s so flexible, and that’s part of the beauty of it.”

The structure can be many things. A basic tent can be set up to provide a shaded, private space and quickly taken down. Thatched huts or other shelters made from local materials might be an option. Sometimes a large truck or a bus is all that is used, just enough to provide room to work and a bit of shelter. Or sometimes a local building – a community centre or a school, for example – has available space, and arrangements are sought with local authorities to conduct operations.

On assignments in Sudan, South Sudan, Palestine, Nigeria and Yemen, Shelley has experienced first-hand the variety and effectiveness of mobile clinics operated by MSF as well as our partners.

She points out that in a context like Sudan, where ongoing conflict creates so much displacement, mobile clinics are uniquely suited to respond: “If the population moves, you can move to where they are, because it’s not a big structure. There’s not a lot of investment in infrastructure. You can follow the population.”

The typical staffing requirements are streamlined and simple.

“You always need a doctor, a nurse and health promotion. And then you should have a midwife, because family planning, antenatal care and postnatal care are so hard to access,” Shelley says. “So you need those four profiles and then usually an international mobile staff member to be the security focal point to help give the team access and coordinate the activities.”

Health promotion plays an essential part in running an effective mobile clinic. “You need community engagement, because that’s how you let people know,” she says. “One, you have the acceptance, and two, people know that you’re there and that they can access free medical care.”

MSF’s mobile clinics in Palestine’s West Bank provide a vivid example of how teams adapt to complex challenges to respond to local health needs, and the multiple functions the teams perform.

“My second assignment with MSF was in Hebron in the West Bank, and they already had mobile clinics set up there for a while. It was our only access to Masafer Yatta, to lots of Palestinian communities, and we had to go to them because they couldn’t pass checkpoints,” she says.

“We ran clinics in three different areas, and they were quite established. One was in a community centre, and we’d rent that for the day we were there, and others we’d just erect tents and that’s where we went. We packed the ute or the pick-up and go and set up. You run the clinic for the day and then you pack up and go home. It was really our only access.”

Through the mobile clinics, the teams could provide residents a range of basic healthcare services, including paediatric care, treatment for chronic communicable and non-communicable diseases, reproductive health, mental health for survivors of violence, and nutritional screening. The teams would typically see more than a hundred patients a day.

“We had two doctors, and one had a strength in gynaecology,” Shelley says. “We had a shortage of midwife activity managers, but we had a local midwife. Ideally you want someone who has experience with children – a lot of our population was children, and we had one doctor who was strong in paediatrics.”

Residents of Masafer Yatta, in the southern hills of Hebron Governorate, have faced expulsion threats and demolition orders since 1981, when the Israeli army designated the area as a firing zone – a closed military zone. Israeli authorities put extraordinary pressure on the residents to leave the area, limiting their access to electricity, water, food and education, as well to freedom of movement and medical care. In such a tightly restricted environment, reaching communities is a serious challenge.

“Every morning there was this process that had been set up with the authorities,” Shelley says. “The field coordinator would liaise with the authorities. We’d get the green light, then we could move. I think there were a couple of times when we were stopped at checkpoints and told we couldn’t pass, and then you make the phone call to the field coordinator, who clears it up with the head of IDF [Israel Defence Forces] and then we’re allowed to pass.”

Shelley acted as the security focal point for the team. “You’re completely vulnerable, really. You’re the only international staff. You’ve got Palestinians in an area where they’re not welcome.  And so you’re their protection. You need to have an idea of how you can protect them and what you need to look out for and what you would do, because you’re literally in a car or in a tent, and that’s it.”

In such a scenario, a mobile clinic can serve another essential function: bearing witness. The MSF teams in the West Bank saw first-hand the consequences of the measures enforced by Israeli authorities. As well as installing checkpoints, the authorities confiscated residents’ vehicles, enforced curfews, and put other movement restrictions in place. Homes, schools and other structures were demolished.

The constant fear of aggression and violence committed by Israeli settlers and armed forces took a massive toll on the mental health of Palestinians, especially those living in areas like Masafer Yatta, where threats of forcible transfer, injury and possible death were ever-present.

“The mobile clinic was also our eyes. No one was watching what was happening or could watch what was happening in Masafer Yatta,” Shelley says. “It was MSF that could do that through the mobile clinics – seeing the behaviour of the settlers, what people did in an emergency, the difficulties getting anywhere. Even travelling by donkey, people were harassed and stopped.”

The clinics are also about human connections. Shelley is struck by the bond built with communities through the mobile clinics. She recalls while working at the community centre in Hebron an incident forced the team to shelter in place.

“There was a security situation, and we needed to hibernate. And people came, neighbours came on foot – even though there was active shooting going on – to give us food. It was so valued, and they were so grateful that we would come once a week, and that’s all we did,” she says. “It was amazing.”