News from our projects

Papua New Guinea managed to avoid the worst of the global pandemic in 2020. Now, the country is enduring a severe COVID-19 outbreak that is threatening to overwhelm the health system.

Stigma and misinformation hamper efforts to fight off the coronavirus. Médecins Sans Frontières is providing psychological support to COVID-19 patients in PNG as the country continues to struggle with the outbreak. 

Of the 860,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, most live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. With COVID-19 compounding the poor living conditions—and the recent large fire that swept through the camp—the situation for those in the area is bleak. 

MSF's activities are centred in the ‘mega camp’, a large collection of 26 camps. Bernard Wiseman, head of mission in Cox’s Bazar, describes the conditions the Rohingya currently face. 

Since the start of the war in Syria 10 years ago, the lives of Syrian people have been under threat.

In 2011, the situation quickly shifted from localised protests to a full-scale war, leading to a devastating humanitarian situation that persists a decade later. In the course of 10 years, 12 million Syrians—half the pre-conflict population—have been forced to flee the conflict and leave their homes behind, often multiple times, making it the biggest displacement crisis of this century. Many of them are still displaced today. 

Living in overcrowded camps for years on end, without legal status in Bangladesh, was already very distressing for the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar. The COVID-19 pandemic has only brought greater restrictions, and stress, to the refugees caught in limbo.  

Since fighting first erupted in northern Ethiopia in early November, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Some 50,000 people have crossed the border into Sudan as refugees, leaving border towns struggling to provide adequate food and shelter for those fleeing the violence. 

MSF teams in the region are providing essential medical care and support to refugees as they cross into Sudan. Australian nurse Kiera Sargeant, former MSF medical coordinator in Sudan, discusses the urgent needs and our current responses to the crisis. 

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been grappling with its worst economic crisis in decades, along with significant social unrest and political turmoil. In addition to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2020, a major explosion tore through the capital, Beirut, in August, causing widespread devastation.

The country is already hosting the largest number of refugees per capita in the world. The overlapping crises in Lebanon have exacerbated people’s vulnerability and pushed thousands into poverty. 

On Sunday January 3, the coalition of non-state armed groups attacked and took control of Bangassou, a town in the southeast of the Central African Republic on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams transported and urgently treated some of the wounded at the Bangassou Regional University Hospital (HRUB), a health structure that we have supported since 2014.

While the COVID-19 pandemic dominated headlines in 2020, there was no end to other diseases, emergencies and crises affecting people globally.  
  
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) continued to work alongside health authorities and communities in more than 70 countries. 
  
From assisting Syrians displaced by conflict to continuing essential sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls, these are ten of our biggest responses outside of COVID-19 in 2020. 

The conflict in Yemen, rooted in a failed political transition, has been simmering since 2011. Renewed conflict on the frontlines of Yemen’s Red Sea Coast has become some of the most intense in the country, increasing the number of civilians needing major war-trauma surgery.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders calls for an end to the indiscriminate and unacceptable attacks on civilians in Yemen.