Stories & News

How are refugees and other displaced people being impacted by, and enduring, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and how is Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) responding in these communities?

It has been one month since the attack on the maternity wing in Dasht-e-Barchi Hospital. Here, Melbourne-based Dr Katherine Franklin reflects on how the tragic event conflicts with memories of her time working in the project in 2016. 

As we adjust to differences in our lives that have been brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, many of us may be feeling anxious or losing sleep. The uncertainties that this pandemic has brought can be stressful, and it’s important to look after our mental health to make sure we are equipped to deal with the changes to our lives.

Raimund, a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) psychologist, offers some simple tips for how to improve your mental health and cope with increased stress during the pandemic.

So what exactly is PPE, and what do we all need to know about how it should be used, and the impact of shortages? 

Around the world, governments fund critically important medical research and development using public money — including to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Publicly funded research has led to dramatic healthcare innovations, but unfortunately, most countries rarely demand that the resulting health innovations be safeguarded for public health, or be made affordable and accessible to those who need them most.

With most patients arriving at the COVID-19 treatment centre only once their symptoms have become severe, the healthcare staff remaining face a challenging task in bringing the outbreak under control.

A consortium of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academic institutes that advocate for universal access to sexual and reproductive health services are calling on the Australian Government to prioritise the needs of women and girls in Australia’s global response to COVID-19 in order to mitigate the detrimental effects the pandemic is having on their sexual and reproductive health and rights.  

The number of deaths occurring in the COVID-19 treatment centre that Médecins sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) runs in Aden, Yemen, speaks to a wider catastrophe unfolding in the city and the UN and donor states need to do more urgently to help the response.

In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, three countries in sub-Saharan Africa are enduring some of the largest measles outbreaks in the world. But preventative measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 could jeopardise lifesaving measles vaccination campaigns.

In the days following the attack to Dasht-e-Barchi hospital in Kabul, it has become clear that what happened in Kabul on 12 May was a deliberate assault on a maternity hospital with the purpose of killing mothers in cold blood. MSF Head of Pogrammes in Afghanistan Frederic Bonnot was there on the scene and shares his harrowing story.