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Health promotion and in-house check ups in Bahia, Brazil
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Our teams are working to improve medical care for migrants and asylum seekers from Venezuela, as well as local communities.

Our activities are concentrated in the capital city, Boa Vista, and at the border town of Pacaraima, where most Venezuelans arrive to Brazil.   

We provide medical consultations, mental health assistance, and run health promotion activities. We reach our patients through mobile clinics at migrant hotspots, visits shelters and offer support to local health facilities. 

Our activities in 2022 in Brazil

Data and information from the International Activity Report 2022.

MSF in Brazil in 2022 In 2022, Médecins Sans Frontières conducted activities to assist the growing numbers of Venezuelan migrants arriving in Brazil. We also provided mental health care for people affected by floods and landslides.
Brazil IAR map 2022

The end of border closures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a huge increase in new arrivals at the end of 2021. The number of Venezuelans who crossed the border surpassed 160,000 in 2022, more than in the two previous years combined*. This placed an additional strain on already overburdened local healthcare facilities.

As a result, we scaled up our response in the northern state of Roraima, assisting with the provision of general healthcare, health promotion, mental health support, and sexual and reproductive health services, by running mobile clinics in migrant hotspots, shelters and informal settlements in the capital, Boa Vista, and in Pacaraima.

We also provided medical assistance to indigenous communities from Venezuela in rural areas around Pacaraima. These migrants are particularly vulnerable, due to the barriers they face in accessing the public health system.

In the first half of 2022, we offered mental health support and training for communities affected by severe floods and landslides in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Pernambuco. With search and rescue activities covered by local authorities, we focused on increasing access to mental health support. Our teams trained health workers, as well as civil servants such as teachers, social workers and community leaders, so that they could provide psychosocial support to survivors of the disaster, and also create a long-lasting local capacity to enable communities to respond to such events in the future. 

*IOM: https://brazil.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl1496/files/documents/Informe_Migracao-Venezuelana_Jan2017-Dez2022.pdf

 

In 2022
 
Venezuelan migrants and refugees in northern Brazil
Brazil

Venezuelan migrants left without healthcare, shelter and services

Project Update 14 Dec 2021
 
Mobile clinics in Fortaleza, Brazil
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic threatens to deteriorate in Brazil as 500,000 deaths recorded

Project Update 30 Jun 2021
 
MSF response to COVID-19 in Porto Velho - Rondonia
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

Failed COVID-19 response drives Brazil to humanitarian catastrophe

Press Release 15 Apr 2021
 
Regional hospital of Tefé
Brazil

COVID-19 leaves Amazonas health system saturated, overloaded and struggling

Project Update 21 Jan 2021
 
Home visit at indigenous village of Limao Verde
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

MSF works to prevent spread of COVID-19 among indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul

Project Update 17 Sep 2020
 
Covid-19 in Amazon region
Brazil

Chasing COVID-19 in the Brazilian Amazon

Exposure.co 4 Aug 2020