Stories & News

Climate change has disastrous health impacts. As a medical humanitarian organisation, we are already seeing these impacts on the people we treat in over 70 countries around the world.

A medical and humanitarian response must be scaled up as malaria and malnutrition rife among returnees living in dire conditions in Renk, South Sudan

Catastrophic flooding began in June, and the situation remains an emergency, with critical humanitarian needs. The current response is inadequate. The basic needs of people living in the worst flood-affected areas such as access to essential food assistance, healthcare and safe drinking water, remain unmet. 

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. 

Akeela, an Outreach Counsellor with MSF since 2020, lived in the village of Mir Gul Hassan Manju Shori Barun Naseerabad which is around 5 kilometres from Dera Murad Jamali (DMJ) in Balochistan, one of the areas hardest hit by monsoon rains and extreme flooding that left one third of Pakistan underwater. After losing her home, she is now responding to the emergency on the front line.

Malaria continues to be a major health problem in South Sudan, with the ongoing humanitarian crisis impacting the severity of the outbreaks. With those under five years of age most at risk, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has launched a seasonal malaria chemoprevention program in Aweil to prevent infection and serious illness among children.

In the MSF Children’s Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, critically ill children are treated year-round. Many suffer life-threatening complications of malaria—like Paul B. Morris Junior, who arrived unconscious. Paul’s mother Lydia and the team who treated him share his story. 

Around the world, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) teams are working to ensure children receive the best healthcare possible. The stories below talk about the enormous challenges faced by these young patients and the impact of MSF programs on helping them survive and stay well. 

In this third and final part of her blog series from Aweil, South Sudan, Dr Madeleine Finney-Brown describes an unforgettable day in the paediatric Intensive Care Unit. 

Dr Madeleine Finney-Brown is an advanced paediatric trainee from Melbourne working in the MSF-run paediatrics department of Aweil Civil Hospital, Aweil, South Sudan. In the first of a three-part blog, Madeleine describes the terrible effects of cerebral malaria in young children during the malaria ‘peak’.