We provide medical and psychological assistance to people affected by the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. The majority of our staff working in Gaza are Palestinians and have themselves been affected by the displacement and violence. Despite the challenges, they have worked tirelessly since October 2023 to offer surgical support, wound care and physiotherapy to those injured by the fighting. We also deliver maternity and pediatric care, mental health services and distribute water.

Despite the lack of supplies and the destroyed health system, we are doing whatever we can to keep assisting our patients. This has included setting up field hospitals and working with local carpenters to improvise crutches to help injured people walk. We were successfully able to arrange evacuations for 13 children and their caregivers to Jordan, so they could receive the critical treatment that was not possible to provide within Gaza.

In the West Bank, Doctors Without Borders is focused on providing emergency care, mental health services and primary healthcare via mobile clinics. We also support hospitals with fuel and water to keep them running and provide basic hygiene kits and essential items to people who have been displaced by the violence.

Doctors Without Borders currently works in 10 out of 18 states in Sudan. Surgery, including trauma care for war-related injuries, is a main activity. The violence against civilians continues to intensify and our emergency rooms must frequently respond to mass influxes of patients with gunshot and bomb blast injuries.

In Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, Doctors Without Borders has been supporting Al Buluk children’s hospital, with ad-hoc donations of essential drugs and medical supplies, technical support for logistic, water and sanitation, and food for patients. The focus of Doctors Without Borders’ support is inpatient management of patients with malnutrition complications.

Since August 2024, the hospital has seen a huge surge in cases of severe malnutrition. In response, we have increased our support by providing more technical support to medical staff, providing protection rations to discharged patients and covering the costs of admission files.

In August 2024, Doctors Without Borders teams in Cox’s Bazar camps treated 116 Rohingya people who reported fleeing an attack in Maungdaw, Rakhine state. They suffered from landmine injuries and gunshot wounds; most were children, women and the elderly.

Doctors Without Borders mental health professionals witness firsthand the devastating impact of trauma and violence on the mental well-being of Rohingya people. Every month, our facilities see over 30 patients who arrive with a variety of mental health complaints, including post-traumatic stress disorder, severe depression and anxiety.

Doctors Without Borders provides vital support for vulnerable groups. When patients visit our facilities, our counsellors prioritise their safety, dignity and confidentiality. We create a supportive environment where they can share their experiences and express their suffering. For women, this often involves specific psychiatric consultations tailored to their unique circumstances.

Doctors Without Borders runs nine projects in eight provinces, maintaining a strong focus on emergency care, surgery, secondary care and mother and child health. Since 2023, there has been a gradual but stable increase in the number of patients coming to Doctors Without Borders facilities, largely due to the improved security situation, which made it easier for people to travel. However, many Afghan people still face huge challenges in accessing care.

Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Doctors Without Borders provides free, high-quality maternal and neonatal healthcare in two hospitals in Helmand and Khost provinces. We place an emphasis on training local female staff and almost all of the midwives are Afghan women.

We have also started supporting the pediatric department at Mazar-i-Sharif regional hospital in Balkh province. As the only regional referral hospital covering several provinces, our team sees thousands of critically ill children in the emergency room each month. At one point, our bed occupancy rate was over 200 per cent, meaning that every bed had more than one patient.

Doctors Without Borders supports Yemen’s fragile health system, providing comprehensive medical services and responding to surging rates of malnutrition and preventable diseases.

In 2023, Doctors Without Borders supported 17 hospitals and 18 other health facilities in 13 governorates across Yemen, focusing on maternal and child health, specialist and emergency care, and responding to malnutrition and outbreaks of preventable diseases such as cholera, diphtheria and measles. We have assisted health centres across the country by providing training, donations of medicines and funding for referrals to Doctors Without Borders-supported facilities.

In July 2024, Doctors Without Borders integrated our maternity services into Mocha General hospital. This allowed us to expand the services we could offer, including opening the new comprehensive obstetric and neonatal care ward. 

Doctors Without Borders community health workers in western Yemen go door-to-door to measure the mid-upper arm circumference of children, pregnant women and new mothers. All those who show signs of malnutrition are referred to the nearest health centre with therapeutic feeding capacity.

Doctors Without Borders has increased activities to address the underreported malnutrition crisis and assist people displaced by violence. We expand our community outreach programs to help improve early identification and prevention of malnutrition in children. This includes sending outreach teams to promote the use of the ‘Tom Brown’ recipe. Derived from locally available, nutritious staples, it is a good alternative to ready-to-use therapeutic foods and can be made cheaply on demand.

Doctors Without Borders will continue to provide treatment to people suffering from malnutrition in northern Nigeria, but the catastrophic nutritional situation seen in recent years calls for a larger international response. The expansion of health facilities is essential to treat severely malnourished children and ensure that more hospitals can offer the type of inpatient care desperately needed to save lives.

Doctors Without Borders is working to restore vital medical services. Our teams worked to maintain and expand activities in our two trauma hospitals and two emergency centres in Port-au-Prince. We treated victims of gunshot and stab wounds and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, as well as people with severe burns.

Doctors Without Borders provided more than 4.5 million litres of treated water in 15 sites, provided training to site managers on water chlorination and hygiene, built or renovated nine latrines and emergency showers and distributed hygiene kits. In areas with inadequate access to treated water and latrines, Doctors Without Borders mobile clinics have treated hundreds of people for waterborne diseases, including acute watery diarrhoea and scabies, a skin condition linked to hygiene.