Stories & News

Donna Collins, nurse and midwife from Whangārei, New Zealand, shares her experience working in humanitarian projects, including as a midwife activity manager with MSF in Lebanon. 

Five months of armed conflict along Lebanon’s southern border have resulted in hundreds of deaths and forced more than 91,000 people from their homes.

Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, escalating military activity along Lebanon’s southern border has forced thousands of people in border towns to flee north or to major cities. 

Lebanon is battling its first outbreak of cholera in three decades. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides hygiene kits, vaccinations, oral rehydration points, in the Bekaa valley, north and northeast of the country areas with the highest number of confirmed cases in addition to medical care in two cholera treatment centers in Bekaa Valley.

In 2022, MSF teams around the world continued to respond to crises, old and new. While COVID-19 was not the emergency it was in previous years, new challenges arose. The war in Ukraine escalated in February; the political, humanitarian and economic crises in Haiti deteriorated severely; cholera emerged on an exceptional scale in several countries. 

Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is contributing to the national vaccination campaign against cholera launched by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health’s by vaccinating people in Arsal, Akkar, Tripoli and Baalbak - Hermel in the north and northeast of Lebanon where most cholera cases are registered in the country.

600,000 cholera vaccine doses received by Lebanon, as first phase procurement, are to be administered in coordination with various international and local actors.

After Syria, where a cholera outbreak has now spread over most of the country, affecting 13 of the 14 governorates, on October 6th, 2022, the Minister of Public Health (MoPH) in Lebanon has also officially declared a cholera outbreak in the country.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is in Lebanon helping provide access to water, set up sanitation systems, and provide medical aid.

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. 

One month after the explosion ripped through Beirut, MSF teams continue to provide aid to those injured and left homeless in a country that has been battered by crisis. Jonathan Whittall, former MSF emergency coordinator in Beirut and director of MSF’s Analysis Department, answers questions on our response since the explosion on 4 August.

In the week since the devastating blast in Beirut, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams have been providing medical care and mental health support to those most impacted by the explosion. With the city already struggling with an economic crisis and a surge in COVID-19 cases, healthcare assistance is even more essential to those living in Lebanon.