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In April, 11 MSF staff joined the University College London Hospital (UCLH) Find and Treat team in establishing the UK’s only Covid care facility for people experiencing homelessness.

The project provided rapid testing, accommodation for self-isolation and medical care for members of the London homeless community with suspected or confirmed COVID-19.  

MSF brought expertise on outbreak and emergency response, helping the facility to be opened rapidly and safely with nursing and logistical support.

At the time of opening, people with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 had already been identified in several homeless hotels across London and were transferred to the facility for care.

As surveillance in the hotels, other accommodation, and in hospitals continued, people experiencing homelessness with symptoms of COVID-19 were identified and transferred to the Covid Care Centre for testing, isolation, and nursing support. 

As patient numbers in the Covid Care Centre began to decrease, MSF nurses joined UCLH’s Find & Treat teams on their screening programmes.  Initially, this was to screen for COVID-19 in homeless accommodation across London, as well as joining the street teams who engage with those still rough sleeping.

The screening aimed to identify patients and detect any clusters of cases that may be occurring in this vulnerable population. To date, over 1,300 people experiencing homelessness have been tested for COVID-19 through this approach.

In late May, as the number of positive COVID-19 cases reduced, the Find & Treat teams evolved their screenings to include blood-borne viruses including HIV, hepatitis C, as well as syphilis. These are diseases that people experiencing homelessness are at risk of.

With large numbers of this vulnerable community staying in hotels, it was an opportunity for medical teams to try and engage them within the health system.  

MSF staff joined the Find & Treat teams to undertake this screening, with 600 people being fully screened over a two-week period. It is hoped that these screenings will help health services better engage with homeless populations in the longer term. 


Following this screening period, MSF has now concluded its involvement with the project and members of our nursing team have joined the UCLH team for the coming weeks as the project winds down due to consistently low numbers – in line with the decrease in cases we are seeing across the UK.

This project represented the first time since MSF was founded in 1971 that we were providing medical assistance in the UK.

We intended this to be a short-term project in the UK and now the NHS has more capacity to cope, it is the right time to withdraw our staffing support and continue to focus our work in regions of the world most affected by medical and humanitarian crises.

We remain ready to rapidly increase our support again should the situation deteriorate in the future and we identify critical gaps in the UK response to COVID-19.
United Kingdom

MSF support to London COVID-19 care centre ends

msf.org.uk - 11 Jun 2020
 
Yemen, gouvernorat de Sanaa, mars 2018. Vue du toit du bureau de MSF à Sanaa.

Sanaa governorate in Yémen, March 2018. View from MSF office rooftop in Sanaa.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

“COVID-19 has made the health system's collapse complete” in Yemen

MSF is treating patients severely ill with coronavirus at our COVID-19 centre in Sana’a, Yemen, where the 15-bed ICU has been mostly full for the past four weeks. People are dying of the new coronavirus at a high rate as our teams try to save lives.

Project Update - 10 Jun 2020
 
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has opened a COVID-19 treatment center in Drouillard, Cité Soleil, with a capacity of 20 beds. MSF will treat patients tested positive for COVID-19 who need hospitalization or oxygen, and have been referred by the Ministry of Public Health and Population. Patients will then spend 14 days recovering in these tents, on the hospital grounds.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 cases in Haiti spike dramatically as MSF opens treatment centre

In response to the growing spread of COVID-19 in Haiti, MSF opened the Drouillard treatment centre in Port-au-Prince, to care for people with severe cases of the coronavirus.  Project Update - 5 Jun 2020
 
The MSF treatment centre for COVID-19 patients at the Amirou Boubacar Diallo National Hospital in Niamey, Niger, has 50 beds, with the potential to accommodate up to 100 beds in case of a peak in patient numbers. The semi-permanent structure is completely autonomous to treat patients and limit the risk of transmission to the neighbouring hospital. The centre has superior infection control conditions and is divided into five main buildings. One of these receives suspected cases with complications, while the other four are for confirmed cases requiring hospitalisation.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

Facing multiple challenges in responding to COVID-19 in Niger

MSF teams are supporting health authorities in Niger to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, in a context where insecurity is rife and persistent rumours and misinformation add to the complexity of the response. Project Update - 3 Jun 2020
 
Dr. Enrique Valdespino testing oxygen concentrator in Matamoros’ MSF COVID-19 centre
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

MSF opens two COVID-19 treatment centres in northeastern Mexico

MSF has opened COVID-19 treatment centres in Reynosa and Matamoros, in far northeastern Mexico, in coordination with the local health authorities, to help prevent their health systems from becoming overwhelmed. Project Update - 3 Jun 2020
 
Oxygen bottles in Yemen
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

“We have a lot of people that die quickly” of COVID-19 in Yemen

MSF teams have been running the COVID-19 treatment centre in Aden, Yemen, where the rates of people dying from the coronavirus - and quickly - have staggered our staff. Project Update - 2 Jun 2020
 
The special centre for COVID-19 patients has a maximum capacity of 22 beds with oxygen intakes: 16 hospital beds and 6 intensive care beds with mechanical ventilation.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

MSF opens COVID-19 centre in Venezuela

MSF doctors, nurses, and transport maintenance staff have joined forces with staff from Venezuela's Ana Francisca Pérez de León II in the capital Caracas to set up a COVID-19 treatment centre. Project Update - 29 May 2020
 
MSF Medical Doctor Anna-Clara Ivrasson in consultation with a young patient in the measles ward of Bossangoa Hospital. Bossangoa was at the epicentre of the measles outbreak when this picture was taken.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

Continuing essential medical services during COVID-19

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt in every one of MSF’s projects. Since the beginning, our priority has been to keep existing essential medical services up and running. Project Update - 28 May 2020
 
Dayana Tabbarah, MSF health promoter, and Hala Hussein, MSF nurse, in the streets of Burj al-Barajneh camp, Beirut. Together, they visit houses of patients who have agreed to participate in the shielding approach recently put in place by MSF in the camp. The project is still in its pilot phase: six families, who were already part of MSF’s home-based care cohort, accepted to practice shielding.

المرشدة الصحية مع منظّمة أطباء بلا حدود دايانا طبارة، والممرضة مع منظّمة أطباء بلا حدود هالة حسين، تجوبان شوارع مخيم برج البراجنة في بيروت. معاً، تزوران منازل المرضى الذين وافقوا على المشاركة في برنامج الحماية الوقائية الذي وضعته أطباء بلا حدود مؤخراً في المخيم. لا يزال المشروع في مرحلته التجريبية: وافقت ستّ عائلات، كانت مسبقاً ضمن المجموعة التي تتلقى الرعاية المنزلية من المنظّمة، على تنفيذ ممارسات الحماية الوقائية.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

Offering extra protection against COVID-19 to Lebanon’s most vulnerable

MSF is visiting homes in refugee camps in Lebanon, to provide health awareness and education on coronavirus COVID-19 to high-risk and vulnerable people and families. Project Update - 26 May 2020
 
External view of MSF hospital in Drouillard, which receives severely burned patients.
Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic

MSF opens a COVID-19 treatment centre in Haiti

MSF has repurposed our burns hospital in Drouillard, a neighbourhood of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, to treat people with COVID-19. Project Update - 18 May 2020
Four mothers posing in a corridor of the Hospital in Bili. All four of them are staying in the hospital with their child, that's suffering from a severe case of malaria. Since the beginning of the project in 2016, the pediatric ward already treated more than 4.000 cases of complicated/severe form of malaria.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Independent medical humanitarian assistance

We provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Our teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff - most of them hired locally. Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence and impartiality. We are a non-profit, self-governed, member-based organisation.

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