Around the world, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) teams are working to ensure children receive the best healthcare possible. The stories below talk about the enormous challenges faced by these young patients and the impact of MSF programs on helping them survive and stay well. 

Malnutrition remains one of the major challenges in reducing child deaths, including in conflict-affected countries like Yemen. The six-year war in the country has had severe consequences for children.

Many of Tigray’s six million people live in mountainous and rural areas where they are all but invisible to the outside world. While teams of aid workers have been deployed to the main cities of this northern Ethiopian region over recent months, aid is failing to reach more remote communities, where the impact of the conflict has often been severe. Many people have been unable to access healthcare and other basic services for the past six months and are still living in fear.

Papua New Guinea managed to avoid the worst of the global pandemic in 2020. Now, the country is enduring a severe COVID-19 outbreak that is threatening to overwhelm the health system.

Stigma and misinformation hamper efforts to fight off the coronavirus. Médecins Sans Frontières is providing psychological support to COVID-19 patients in PNG as the country continues to struggle with the outbreak. 

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF / Doctors Without Borders) has scaled-up its emergency response amid a surging second wave of COVID-19 in Mumbai in Maharashtra state. India recently broke a global record when it recorded more than 300,000 new infections in a single day, with a whopping 115,736 new cases reported in Maharashtra state on a single day on 16 April.

Of the 860,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, most live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. With COVID-19 compounding the poor living conditions—and the recent large fire that swept through the camp—the situation for those in the area is bleak. 

MSF's activities are centred in the ‘mega camp’, a large collection of 26 camps. Bernard Wiseman, head of mission in Cox’s Bazar, describes the conditions the Rohingya currently face. 

Since the start of the war in Syria 10 years ago, the lives of Syrian people have been under threat.

In 2011, the situation quickly shifted from localised protests to a full-scale war, leading to a devastating humanitarian situation that persists a decade later. In the course of 10 years, 12 million Syrians—half the pre-conflict population—have been forced to flee the conflict and leave their homes behind, often multiple times, making it the biggest displacement crisis of this century. Many of them are still displaced today. 

Living in overcrowded camps for years on end, without legal status in Bangladesh, was already very distressing for the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar. The COVID-19 pandemic has only brought greater restrictions, and stress, to the refugees caught in limbo.  

Since fighting first erupted in northern Ethiopia in early November, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Some 50,000 people have crossed the border into Sudan as refugees, leaving border towns struggling to provide adequate food and shelter for those fleeing the violence. 

MSF teams in the region are providing essential medical care and support to refugees as they cross into Sudan. Australian nurse Kiera Sargeant, former MSF medical coordinator in Sudan, discusses the urgent needs and our current responses to the crisis.