Stories & News

In 2020, an estimated 342,000 women died of cervical cancer. More than 90 per cent of those women lived in low- and middle-income countries. In the same year, 604,000 new cases were diagnosed.

Tankred Stöbe, MSF emergency coordinator, visited several countries in South-East Asia to assess their preparedness for potential outbreaks of COVID-19 and the support MSF could provide at this stage. He participated in training sessions with healthcare staff in a hepatitis C clinic in Phnom Penh A similar training was held in a hospital in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where MSF treats patients with tuberculosis. The training sessions helped to improve knowledge and reduce fear among the staff, two prerequisites for providing the best level of care to our patients.
 

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls for no patents or profiteering on drugs, tests, or vaccines used for the COVID-19 pandemic, and for governments to prepare to suspend and override patents and take other measures, such as price controls, to ensure availability, reduce prices and save more lives.

After more than a decade of armed conflict, outbreaks of severe malnutrition, malaria, measles and cholera, approximately 1.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Borno state now face the spectre of COVID-19. Many live in vastly overcrowded camps with poor water and sanitation facilities, limited supplies of hygiene essentials such as soap and water, and often no individual space at all. Functioning health infrastructure in Borno is scarce, and the capacity to refer patients is extremely limited.