Stories & News

Médecins Sans Frontières field workers are familiar with responding to emergencies and navigating quickly changing circumstances. Many have now drawn on that experience as they respond to the COVID-19 outbreak within Australia, in roles ranging from direct patient care, to providing health workers with psychological support, to managing Australia’s overall medical response. 

Médecins Sans Frontières is an international medical humanitarian organisation. We provide free medical care to millions of people in more than 70 countries around the world. This humanitarian assistance is made possible by the work of our field workers including many from Australia and New Zealand. Each year, MSF Australia sends around 200 Australians and New Zealanders on overseas field assignments to provide medical-humanitarian aid.

Gwoza, a garrison town in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, is home to 60,000 people, many of whom have been displaced from their homes by the conflict. Living conditions are difficult: there is little humanitarian aid, and frequent clashes take place between the military and armed groups. Many people in Gwoza have witnessed acts of violence or lost loved ones, livelihoods and homes as they fled in search of safety. Among those victim to this violence are children, many of whom arrived in Gwoza alone.

When Mary*, a 15-year-old school student in Monrovia, Liberia, started having epileptic seizures last year, it was frightening and confusing for her and everyone around her. The Médecins Sans Frontières-supported epilepsy treatment program at Star of the Sea Health Centre has helped her family and community understand the condition so that Mary can draw on their support to stay in school. 

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.

As the global coronavirus pandemic reshapes lives around the world, the health needs of children in low income settings continue to overwhelm already stretched health systems. The impact of COVID-19 on children is twofold: the direct effects of the disease itself, and the indirect consequences. 

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.

On 4 August 2020, a powerful blast ripped through the port warehouses near central Beirut in Lebanon, after highly explosive material that was being stored there ignited. More than a hundred people were killed and nearly 5,000 thousand were injured.

Dr Khairil Musa, an intensive care doctor from Sydney, reflects on his time working with MSF in Aden, Yemen