Reports of indiscriminate violence and ethnic targeting in El Fasher have led to growing global outrage
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim to have arrested several of their fighters after outrage over the extent of killing in the city of El Fasher continues to build.
But the paramilitary group’s move has been greeted with scepticism from human rights campaigners and Sudanese people, who see it as an attempt to temper criticism over the violence.
Continue reading...Explosive weapons designed to be used in battle are being used in urban areas, says Médecins Sans Frontières
Children under 15 years old made up almost a third of outpatients treated for wounds in field hospitals run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Gaza last year, statistics published in The Lancet reveal.
The figures were released by MSF in correspondence with the respected medical journal and come from six health facilities in Gaza supported by the international medical NGO. The facilities are predominantly in the south and centre of the devastated territory.
Continue reading...The IPC’s findings that a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza are starving should mark an urgent turning point in this war
The declaration on Friday of widespread famine in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) should mark a turning point in the war. The IPC, which represents a fastidious survey of available data, is regarded as the international gold standard in nutritional crises.
Long-criticised by humanitarians in other emergencies for its overabundance of caution, the IPC’s declaration of Level 5 – “catastrophic” hunger – in Gaza is a significant moment. Famine, under the IPC’s exacting criteria, requires three critical thresholds to be passed: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths, all of which are now visible in Gaza.
Continue reading...Médecins Sans Frontières report sparks calls for Sudan’s warring parties to be held to account for rapes and attacks
As Sudan’s Darfur region has been overrun by militias, women are facing the constant threat of sexual violence, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has reported.
The medical charity said in the South Darfur region alone its workers treated 659 sexual violence survivors between January and March this year, more than two-thirds of whom had been raped.
Continue reading...University called Dr Joanne Liu, ex-head of Doctors Without Borders, after planning to speak on Gaza and federal cuts
The former international head of Doctors Without Borders says she was left “stunned” after New York University canceled her presentation because some of her slides discussing cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could be viewed as “anti-governmental”.
Dr Joanne Liu, a pediatric emergency physician at Sainte-Justine hospital and a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who also served as the former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), told CTV News last week that she was scheduled on 19 March to give a presentation at her alma mater on challenges in humanitarian crises.
Continue reading...Deliveries of vital food and medical supplies will help 200,000 families, say aid groups and local volunteers
An aid convoy has reached a besieged area of Khartoum for the first time since Sudan’s civil war broke out in April 2023, bringing food and medicines in a country where half of the people are at risk of starvation.
The 28 trucks arrived in southern Khartoum on 25 December, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), which provided 22 trucks loaded with 750 tonnes of food.
Continue reading...For the first time in over 30 years Médicins Sans Frontières halts activity leaving 2 million people in Port-au-Prince without vital healthcare
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said its aid workers are “heartbroken” after the medical NGO was forced to suspend all of its healthcare services in Port-au-Prince for the first time in three decades, leaving Haitians in the violence-ravaged capital without a critical lifeline.
The international non-profit said it had no choice but to halt all operations on Wednesday after staff were repeatedly attacked and received death threats from armed vigilantes and the national police.
Continue reading...Medical charity says its staff members were violently attacked by police and vigilantes 100 meters from hospital
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said that at least two of its patients were killed after one of its ambulances was stopped and attacked in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
MSF said its staff members were violently attacked on Monday after “members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers” stopped the ambulance, which was transporting three young people with gunshot wounds.
Continue reading...Software with database of 380,000 pictures aims to aid quick and accurate identification and ensure correct use of antivenoms
The race to treat snakebite patients in time to save them could be eased by the development of software powered by artificial intelligence.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is trialling AI snake detection in South Sudan using a database of 380,000 pictures of snakes to identify venomous species.
Continue reading...MSF says it is overwhelmed in country where 31.8 million people are suffering from hunger
An unprecedented number of children in northern Nigeria are suffering from acute malnutrition, aid workers in the country have said.
Nigeria has the “largest number of food insecure people globally” at 31.8 million, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization office in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri said.
Continue reading...Médecins Sans Frontières says ‘dangerous manoeuvres’ by coastguard put refugees at even greater risk
An NGO performing search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean has accused the Libyan coastguard of hampering an attempt to save more than 170 people making the perilous journey across the sea to Europe.
In a statement, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said its ship had come to the rescue of two boats in international waters on Saturday: a small fibreglass boat carrying 28 people and a double-deck wooden vessel with 143 people onboard, which appeared to be in distress.
Continue reading...Médecins Sans Frontières logistics expert calls for immediate ceasefire and fears ‘catastrophic’ Israeli ground offensive
An Australian logistics expert who is working at a hospital in Rafah has warned that “everyone here is struggling” while raising fears of a “catastrophic” Israeli ground offensive in the southern Gaza city.
Lindsay Croghan, who is on assignment with Médecins Sans Frontières, also said there must be an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” because a prolonged debate “equates to more deaths”.
Continue reading...More than half a million people made treacherous, weeklong trek in 2023, facing horrors including mass rapes by armed bandits
A sevenfold increase in sexual attacks against people crossing the Darién Gap is compounding the misery for people trekking one of the world’s most dangerous and underreported border crossings, said Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Complete impunity for armed gangs in the lawless stretch of jungle that links South and Central America meant one person became a victim of sexual violence every three and a half hours in December, the overstretched medical organisation said.
Continue reading...Reporting what is being directly witnessed by MSF healthcare workers does not indicate loss of neutrality, Natalie Thurtle stresses
An Australian doctor who coordinated medical aid to Gaza has expressed horror at the “huge proportion of children being killed or maimed for life” as the UN security council again delayed a vote on a ceasefire resolution.
Dr Natalie Thurtle, who helped oversee the response by Médecins Sans Frontières until last week, said it was “very confronting for colleagues trying to provide healthcare when it’s possible to be shot through the window of the hospital”.
Continue reading...UN agency visits al-Shifa hospital after raid by Israeli forces who allege it is used by Hamas as a command centre
Dar al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, has become a “death zone”, the World Health Organization has said, with a mass grave at the entrance and only 25 staff left to care for 291 seriously ill patients after orders from the Israeli army to evacuate the complex.
The WHO managed to access the medical centre in Gaza City on Sunday after it was raided by Israeli forces earlier this week. Israel alleged the militant group Hamas used al-Shifa as a command centre, identifying it as a key target in its military operation despite international outcry.
Continue reading...Charity says that medication and materials at Bashair teaching hospital have run out and surgical team is being withdrawn
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières has suspended life-saving surgery at a hospital in Khartoum after the Sudanese military blocked medical supplies from entering the city.
MSF said it had been refused permission to transport supplies from warehouses in Wad Madani, in Al Jazirah state, to hospitals in the south of the capital since 8 September. The charity said on Thursday that medication and materials at Bashair teaching hospital have now run out and the team could no longer perform trauma surgery or caesarean sections.
Continue reading...With hospitals struggling amid the violence, medics are using helplines on messaging platforms to reach those in need
Sudanese doctors are turning to social media to reach patients as hospitals and heath facilities struggle to function or close completely in the violence. Volunteers have set up 24-hour helplines on messaging platforms including WhatsApp, staffed by hundreds of doctors and specialists.
Only 16% of hospitals in the capital, Khartoum, are operating at full capacity, according to the World Health Organization. Last week at least four people, including a child, were killed in an airstrike outside East Nile hospital in north Khartoum, while Médecins Sans Frontières reported that El Geneina teaching hospital, in west Darfur, was looted on 28 April. Doctors in the country are reporting death threats and on Monday two volunteers who were working to reopen a hospital in Bahri were released after being held for days by the army.
Continue reading...In El Fasher, in North Darfur, only one hospital remains functional, with bomb damage, power cuts and only weeks until lifesaving equipment and drugs run out
Until gunfire broke out on the streets of El Fasher this month, the state capital of North Darfur had several main hospitals. There was the big teaching hospital, the Saudi hospital, a paediatric hospital and the South hospital, a modest 35-bed facility with big ambitions and a specific remit: to help bring down the high numbers of local women dying in pregnancy and childbirth.
Now, almost two weeks into the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), two weeks of bloodshed that has seen terror return to a region once synonymous with human suffering, those options have narrowed.
Continue reading...Calls for aid to be let into Port-au-Prince district after ‘battlefield’ violence leaves dozens dead and cuts supplies of food and water
Haiti’s capital has been racked by a week of heavy fighting between gangs, with the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warning that thousands of people were trapped without food or water in one district of Port-au-Prince’s notorious Cité Soleil slum.
“We are calling on all belligerents to allow aid to enter Brooklyn and to spare civilians,” said Mumuza Muhindo, the MSF’s head of mission in Haiti, in a statement referring to the contested area within the sprawling Cité Soleil.
Continue reading...‘I went to help people,’ says Togolese boy, who was among 71 survivors rescued nine days after boat sank, killing at least 30
The actions of a teenager from Togo have been lauded after video footage was published of him supporting a baby he saved from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea last week in which at least 30 people died.
The 17-year-old, whose identity has not been disclosed, swam to save the child, whom he was holding above water when a rescue team arrived, in footage published by the French media group Brut.
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