Worldwide Work - Borderline: Fighting Ebola

 

As fighting in eastern Ukraine intensified early this year, MSF urgently stepped up its help to hospitals on both sides of the front line to deal with influxes of wounded. Though a ceasefire came into effect in mid-February, fighting continued in parts of the conflict zone. MSF mobile teams went to different towns and cities to provide medicines, relief materials, psychological support and basic healthcare to people in rural areas and to those displaced by the conflict.

 

 

Intense bombing lasted for weeks in January in the East Ghouta rural area near Damascus. Medical facilities were hit and patients and staff evacuated. Hundreds of wounded were treated in MSF-supported medical facilities. In the north, medical staff in an MSF hospital in Aleppo were forced to evacuate due to fierce fighting between government and opposition forces in February.

 

 

In response to the spike in measles cases in Yida refugee camp in Unity State, MSF teams launched a mass vaccination campaign in February to immunise 90 percent of the children in the camps and the nearby host communities—an estimated 35,000 children in all—over a period of five days. 

 

 

In response to the humanitarian and medical needs of the migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, crossing the Mediterranean Sea and arriving in Italy, MSF has provided medical care when they land in Sicily. They have travelled mainly from Syria, Libya and Iraq. In Serbia, MSF also provided essential relief items and medical care to people who were left stranded in forests and abandoned buildings after crossing the border.

 

 

The number of cholera cases in three provinces of Mozambique quickly expanded in February, rising to more than 3,500 people. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, MSF has built two cholera treatment centres in Tete and Moatize, and helped with awareness campaigns about cholera and its prevention, active case finding in the communities, and chlorination of water.