Powerful earthquakes hit the south of Türkiye and northwest Syria on 6 February, resulting in a shocking number of deaths and injuries, as well as massive damage to infrastructure. 

The consequences of the earthquakes have exacerbated the already precarious humanitarian situation for people in northwest Syria. Both medical and relief support remain priorities to attend to the needs of thousands of people who lost their homes and are now exposed to extremely cold temperatures. 

Our teams in northwest Syria are supporting medical facilities by providing staff and donations, supporting ambulances to facilitate the referral of patients, providing relief items to people affected, setting up mobile clinics in shelters and reception camps, and offering psychological aid.

People struggle to access medical care in Afghanistan. This is why we remain in the country, despite major attacks on our healthcare facilities and political uncertainties, to address people’s needs.

Doctors Without Borders focuses on emergency, paediatric, and maternal healthcare in Afghanistan, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

In Helmand and Khost provinces, we provide free, high quality maternal and neonatal healthcare in two hospitals to help reduce death and sickness in mothers and their newborns. Training medical staff is an integral and important part of our projects.

We support the diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. In Kandahar province, in the south of the country, we run a laboratory, as well as facilities for hosting patients during their treatment.

In Kunduz, we opened a new 30-bed trauma centre in August 2021. The centre treats people with trauma injuries, for example, as a result of road traffic accidents, and people injured in the fighting who have complications.

In both Herat and Helmand provinces, we treat malnourished children in inpatient therapeutic feeding centres; those coming to the centre at the regional hospital in Herat have often travelled some distance to get there.

In Nigeria, Doctors Without Borders has been responding to disease outbreaks and emergency health needs for many years, focusing on maternal and paediatric healthcare throughout the country. Since mid-2021, we have scaled up our nutritional activities in the Northwest, as a growing yet largely ignored malnutrition crisis is pushing people to the limits.

We support the Noma Children’s Hospital in Sokoto with acute medical care and reconstructive surgery for patients with noma. Most patients with noma ─ a disfiguring and often deadly infection ─ are children under six, whose immune systems have been weakened by malnutrition. In addition to surgery, our team provides physiotherapy, nutritional and mental health support, and conducts outreach activities to improve early detection. In 2021, our staff conducted 105 surgical interventions. 

“Noma can be prevented by improving the living conditions of people at risk and raising awareness,” says Karla Bill, Doctors Without Borders health advisor for Nigeria. “And it’s treatable with antibiotics if detected and managed early. But little is known about the disease, and more research and resources are urgently needed to investigate its causes, prevalence and risk factors.”

Access to healthcare remains a challenge in Pakistan, especially for people in rural communities, informal settlements and areas affected by conflict.

In Pakistan, Doctors Without Borders focuses on improving access to healthcare for women and children, and treatment for communicable diseases. In 2021, we also continued to support the COVID-19 response.

At five different locations in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, we provide reproductive, neonatal and paediatric care services  We also assisted local communities, Afghan refugees and people in border areas, running emergency obstetric services and nutrition programmes, and ensuring the treatment and referral of critical trauma patients. We also run a cutaneous leishmaniasis programme, with satellite clinics in Peshawar and Bannu districts.  

In Karachi, Sindh province, Doctors Without Borders has a hepatitis C project in the informal settlement of Machar Colony,  and started supporting COVID-19 vaccination activities in September 2021.

In Gujranwala, Punjab province, we opened a new project to diagnose and treat people with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, implementing a decentralised approach, which enables patients to receive care nearer their homes.  

This 2022, we are responding to the flood emergency that has affected more than 33 million people across the country, with a death toll that is now estimated at over 1,700. 

As the war in Ukraine continues, our teams are responding to a humanitarian crisis. Increasingly urgent requests for medical supplies are coming in from many hospitals and health facilities in the more war-affected parts of Ukraine. Doctors Without Borders is seeking ways to donate what is needed, where it is needed.

Our teams are preparing for a range of scenarios which will allow us to step up our response, including providing surgical care, emergency medicine and mental health support for displaced people. Our current response includes:

• Sending experienced medical staff to Ukraine to support our existing teams;
• Sending new cargo shipments of emergency medical supplies to Ukraine;
• Supporting hospitals and doctors remotely, including via telemedicine;
• Donating medical stocks for emergency surgery and trauma care;
• Preparing warehouses and transport for our supplies;
• Assessing needs in the country and the possibility to reach cities such as Odessa, Mykolaiv or Kherson.