Stories & News

As Israeli attacks intensify in Lebanon, healthcare facilities are being forced to close, leading to devastating consequences for civilians and their access to healthcare. MSF urges all warring parties to spare civilians, medical facilities, and medical personnel.

Dr Trudy Rosenwald, who has worked as a mental health activity manager with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Bangladesh, explains the connection between physical and mental health.

Lebanon is experiencing the most significant escalation of conflict since the 2006 Lebanon War, with close to 1,300 people killed between 16 September and 1 October, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health. The intense Israeli bombardments have forced more than one million people to flee their homes. 

For almost a full year now, Israel has carried out unmitigated slaughter in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Since the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, Israeli forces have pursued an all-out war on people in the Gaza Strip. People have been repeatedly displaced and forced into smaller and smaller areas under bombardments and increasingly inhumane conditions.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese families have been forced out of their houses and pushed on the roads, in a desperate search of a safe place following the large-scale Israeli bombardment in Lebanon over the past week. 

Sexual violence is a major medical emergency in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), notably in eastern provinces affected by armed conflicts like North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri or Maniema. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling on the government, donors, humanitarian organisations and parties to the conflict to mobilise to invest more in the prevention of sexual violence, improve access to comprehensive victim-centered care and increase the availability of victim support programmes.

Following the heavy airstrikes over the weekend and the past week, MSF teams in Lebanon have been working around the clock to support people in shelters with water trucking, psychologist first aid, and donations of non-food items in and around Beirut. Many shelters are now overwhelmed in what is being described as the largest wave of displacement in Lebanon’s history.

In response to the Israeli bombings in Lebanon, Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is responding to increasing healthcare needs and the needs of those displaced. 

The results of a nutrition screening carried out by the Sudanese health authorities and Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) earlier this month in Zamzam camp, North Darfur, indicate a catastrophic nutritional situation that is only getting worse.

MSF urges the UN and international stakeholders involved in negotiating broader humanitarian access to consider all options to quickly deliver food and essential supplies in the area.

As the conflict in Sudan continues, a cholera outbreak is sweeping across several states of central and eastern Sudan, bringing yet more risk, death and misery to people already bruised by the country’s brutal war. 

Cholera adds an additional challenge to the crisis amidst mass displacement, insecurity, and difficulties accessing medical care amid a humanitarian response that is far below what is needed.