Following the closure of a detention centre in Misrata, refugees and migrants moved to other facilities in Libya are exposed to increasingly inhumane conditions.

Press Release - 17 Oct 2019

As the only actor in the area, MSF has built these shelters for the internally displaced families in Mbawa Camp, where currently about 3,800 people are sheltering.

MSF is also running a daily mobile clinic, offering basic health care to the displaced population in Mbawa Camp, near the state capital of Makurdi in Benue state.

Nigeria

Working with displaced people in Benue state, Nigeria

Interview with Simona Onidi, MSF project coordinator in Benue state, Nigeria, where our teams support some of the thousands of people displaced by violence. Voices from the Field - 16 Oct 2019

Displaced families now live in an abandoned building in Anka. Parts of the roof have collapsed and need reparation for people to stay dry during the rainy season.

In the town of Anka, around 7,000 displaced people have found shelter in abandoned buildings, schools and construction sites, such as the unfinished new palace of the local traditional ruler, the Emir. Mainly women and children live in the unofficial settlements, as the husbands often return to their looted villages to work on the fields.

Nigeria

On the run from violence in Zamfara state

Violence in Nigeria's Zamfara and Benue states has forced thousands of people from their homes. Their medical and humanitarian needs are great. Project Update - 15 Oct 2019

A family managed to flee the frontlines towards Tal Tamer and to either Hasakah or Qamishli . Fortunately, they managed to hire a truck and brought some of their dire possessions with them. During the conflict it is often quite high prices to rent a truck to bring their possessions with them.

Syria

Northeast Syria: MSF forced to evacuate staff due to extreme volatility in the region

Volatility in northeast Syria has forced Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to suspend most of our activities there and evacuate all international staff. Press Release - 14 Oct 2019

Over 18 Schools have been opened up so far in Hasakeh city to provide for the steady influx of IDPs fleeing the frontline conflict between Turkish and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Each school houses from 150 to 270 people but lack water and hygienic facilities. The Syrian Humanitarian Coordinating Office expect 30,000 refugees to come to the city in the next coming days and to be-housed in these schools. They are beginning to set up for at least a hundred schools. Most of these refugees have no documentation or identification cards due to the conflict that has been raging over the last eight years. Local humanitarian organizations have highlighted the dire need of water supply as a major need.

Syria

Northeast Syria: Turkish military operation results in displacement and hospital closure

Shelling by Turkish military has displaced many people from villages and towns along Syria's northeast border. A hospital has closed. Press Release - 11 Oct 2019

Portrait of Oleg in his living room which is also the bedroom he shares with his partner Alyona, whom he met while undergoing treatment for TB. "I was on treatment for TB, and I was not getting better. In July 2016 I was feeling worse. I would take a job but I wouldn’t be able to work for more than 2 hours. When people would give me a hand for a handshake I wouldn’t shake hands because it was painful as if my hand was breaking.
My condition was deteriorating. In August they did an x-ray and the spot (in the lung) was growing.
I was tired. I’d been through many things in my life – surgeries, an oncological condition, but I’d never experienced anything like it. I was told I should approach MSF, Doctors Without Borders, and that they could help. I approached them and they helped me. I felt sunshine inside me. So the decision had been approved to support my treatment. I’m very grateful to MSF because they offered me a helping hand.
In April 2017 I was transferred to outpatient treatment here, in the TB Dispensary 2. On new treatment, with the new drugs I felt more or less ok in a month. I had an appetite again. MSF staff would call me and visit me, we would talk, joke together and I felt better. All this support has a very good impact. So I was transferred here, I was taking these drugs, and I started gaining weight.
My mother was supporting me during the treatment. I was single then." Oleg says, in Minsk, Belarus, in August 2018.

Tuberculosis

TB drug delamanid must be more affordable and made available in more countries

Drug manufacturer Mylan will introduce a lower price for newer TB drug delamanid in South Africa - but it is still too expensive for those who need it and must be made available at a lower price in other countries Statement - 10 Oct 2019

MSF's Access Campaign and MSF-USA held a demonstration across form the J&J shareholders' meeting on April 25, 2019, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The message was for J7J to bring down the price of newer TB drug bedaquiline to $1 per day.

Access to medicines

MSF demands Johnson & Johnson reduce price of lifesaving TB drug

Despite benefiting from contributions, including tax payer funds, to develop tuberculosis drug bedaquiline, Johnson and Johnson are making huge profits - while people die. We demand that J&J halve the price of bedaquiline. Press Release - 10 Oct 2019

Tin Lay, 42, from Myanmar is in the preparation stage for TB treatment at MSF's Insein clinic, Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 22, 2018.

HIV/AIDS

Urgent boost and reality check needed for HIV and TB funding

An MSF report looking at the funding shortfall for HIV and TB and resulting affects on patients in nine countries highlights the dangers for a potential reversal in the HIV and TB response if donor countries don't increase funding. Press Release - 6 Oct 2019

A Yezidi man aged 24 poses in his tent on Mount Sinjar on September 3rd, 2019.
« We are from the South of the mountain, close to Sinjar City. After the genocide, we stayed for one year in an IDP camp in Kurdistan, then we came here, to the mountain. I live in this tent with my family, my parents, my wife, my brother, my nephews… It is very, very difficult to live here. The living conditions are very hard. It’s either too hot or too cold. The latrines are shared and disgusting. There is no work here. I work with an armed group and make 300 USD a month.
I am never happy. I am always upset. I cannot hang out with my friends because I can’t pretend to be happy. Depression is very hard. I feel like I am melting - and indeed I have lost a lot of weight. I affects my whole body. I also forget a lot of things.
I keep thinking about things I saw, or heard, about the genocide. Children who died. Children who were killed by ISIS and then ISIS cooked them and gave the ‘meat’ to their mothers.
I tried to kill myself three times: by drowning, with a gun, and with a knife. Each time, I was stopped. Since then, my family is worried about me, and I feel guilty because of that. It just makes things worse.
I don’t want to take medication because it has too much side effects. I would like a magic pill to make all of what happened disappear, and make things good again.
In those living conditions, it’s not easy to get better. Every single night I cry myself to sleep. Nothing makes me happy in life. There is no happiness in this life. If I am alive or dead, it’s the same thing. »
©Emilienne Malfatto

Iraq

MSF warns of mental health crisis among Yazidis in Iraq

A mental health crisis, including multiple suicides, is occurring in Iraq among the Yazidi community in Sinjar. IS atrocities took place here in 2014. Press Release - 4 Oct 2019

Inside one of the school warehouse facilities occupied by IDPs in the TVT site, Gedeb. Sites like this one are not fit for human habitation and are extremely overcrowded, with dramatically poor water and hygiene conditions.

Ethiopia

Displacement and humanitarian response in Ethiopia: challenges and dilemmas in complex crises

"Displacement and humanitarian response in Ethiopia: challenges and dilemmas in complex crises" is an MSF report examining two 2018 conflict-driven crises. Report - 3 Oct 2019

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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Closure of detention centre exposes migrants and refugees to even worse conditions