Update 14 January 2022: Two years on since the start of the pandemic, teams are still responding to COVID-19 in countries across the world. However, most COVID-19 activities have since been integrated into our regular programmes, with few COVID-19-focused projects remaining. With this in mind, the information on this page will no longer be kept updated. For information on our latest COVID-19 activities, please see the latest articles published on the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic page.
Activities information last updated 26 September 2021.
Highlights of our COVID-19 response activities can be found in the interactive map below; click on a country to read brief information.
To read detailed information on our activities per country, scroll down to the list below, or click on the regions on the menu to the left.
(Note: neither map nor detailed activities list below are exhaustive of all of our COVID-19 response.)
MSF response to coronavirus disease COVID-19
We started our first activities in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020. As the new coronavirus spread, touching virtually every country in the world, MSF adapted or scaled up our ongoing activities and started new activities in many countries over the course of the first six months of 2020.
We committed substantial resources to developing dedicated COVID-19 projects, maintaining essential healthcare in our existing programmes, and accompanying ministries of health in preparing and/or facing the pandemic. This support was often in the form of training in infection prevention and control, health promotion and organisation of healthcare services. Since the middle of 2020, this training has largely concluded.
Most COVID-19-related activities have been integrated in our regular projects, although we are maintaining some COVID-19-focused projects. Over the last 12 months, our COVID-19-specific activities have been opened (or reopened) and closed as subsequent waves of infections determines the need to scale up. Where we are doing so is very much dependent on the context: the local epidemiological situation, the local health needs, and our own resources.
It is still difficult to provide a global narrative on our operations, as the pandemic is affecting every country in the world, with different consequences, in different places. Therefore, our approach can also be very different from country to country or even from project to project.
Americas
Bolivia
MSF launched a COVID-19 intervention in Bolivia in March 2021. Our activities consist of infection prevention and control measures in health structures, mental health services (for patients and medical staff), and capacity building for frontline workers.
We have also developed health promotion activities in several districts of the country, sharing information with the communities on health practices and preventive measures. Since the beginning of our intervention in the country, the team has organised more than 800 awareness sessions on COVID-19.
Brazil
In Brazil, MSF is working in north Amazonas, in Atalaia do Norte and Benjamin Constant municipalities, where we prepare local health staff in case a new wave of cases strikes the area. Our teams are working on patient flow, rapid testing, mental health and health promotion, with a focus on prevention training in clinics and hospitals.
Africa
Burundi
In Burundi, we launched our first dedicated COVID-19 activities in the country, following an increase in cases in July. Our teams are working in Kinyinya district, Ruiygi province, where we are reinforcing preventive activities through health promotion with community members and leaders. We are also providing medical training in health centres and at the district hospital to guarantee the quality of care and support patients with a nutritional programme.
Cameroon
We have restarted activities in Cameroon, where we provide home-based care and follow up of COVID-19 patients, contact tracing at Buea Regional hospital. We are also constructing a new laboratory to improve the capacity for testing.
Côte d’Ivoire
In Côte d’Ivoire, MSF teams are working in a telemedicine project to help diagnose illnesses that could lead to complications with COVID-19.
Democratic Republic of Congo
In South Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we are working at the Clinique Universitaire de Bukavu to provide training, additional staff, and improvement of infection prevention and control measures, including an isolation circuit. We also ensure the availability of tests and treatment at the hospital.
MSF teams work at the Hôpital Provincial de Reference and Kyeshero Hospital in Goma, North Kivu province, where we provide health promotion and IPC technical support.
MSF teams have also responded to the pandemic in the capital, Kinshasa, and in Ituri province.
Middle East and North Africa
Iraq
In June 2021, a third wave of COVID-19 outbreak was declared in Iraq. With a peak of confirmed infections reaching over 13,000 a day on 28 July - the highest recorded daily infections in the country since the beginning of the pandemic - and a daily death toll exceeding 50 deaths per day during the last week of July and first week of August, the country’s already-weakened health system has been hit harder than in previous waves.
MSF teams are continuing to work in hard-hit Baghdad, where we provide intensive care to severely and critically ill COVID-19 patients. We run the COVID-19 intensive care unit in Al-Kindi hospital, which is constantly full, with new COVID-19 patients often having to wait in the emergency room for a bed to become free.
In Sinjar, in Nineveh governorate, we provide care to people in a seven-bed unit of Sinuni General Hospital dedicated to observing and stabilising suspected COVID-19 patients.
Elsewhere in Iraq, our teams have also responded in Mosul, Erbil, Dohuk and in Laylan camp.
Lebanon
Across Lebanon, MSF’s Medical Response Teams (MRT) support the Ministry of Public Health in its COVID-19 testing strategy - taking PCR samples based on the contact-tracing scheme of the authorities. Our Rapid Response Teams have also been part of the testing campaign, notably in Tripoli and in the Bekaa Valley. The MRT also supports home isolation assessments and provides follow up for confirmed COVID-19 patients in home isolation.
We also support the Ministry of Public Health on the COVID-19 vaccination roll out, where we are currently vaccinating people in a COVID-19 vaccination centre in Bar Elias.
In Lebanon, MSF teams have worked in a number of neighbourhoods across Beirut, plus in Hermel, Saida, Zahle, and Tripoli, among other places.
Asia
Afghanistan
In Herat, in northwestern Afghanistan, we are undertaking testing and triage activities in Herat regional hospital.
In Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, the team is referring people with suspected COVID-19 to the province’s main COVID-19 hospital, Malika Suraya hospital. We are also treating COVID-19 patients with four identified risk factors: those with tuberculosis, surgical patients, children and pregnant women.
In Kandahar, our teams treat DR-TB patients infected with COVID-19 in the MSF DR-TB centre.
MSF teams have also responded to the pandemic in a number of areas across Afghanistan, including in Khost, and Kabul.
Bangladesh
During July and August, an alarming surge in infections and deaths occurred in Bangladesh. In response, MSF teams set up isolation and treatment wards in eight medical facilities in the Cox’s Bazar area for Rohingya refugees and the Bangladeshi host community. We also prepared two standalone intensive care centres, opening one with 16 beds ready to admit patients with moderate or severe symptoms referred from other facilities.
We provide testing at all of our hospitals and basic healthcare centres, including at a specialised clinic. As of June, around 12,000 COVID-19 samples have been collected and more than 600 patients have received COVID-19 care.
In Kamrangirchar, a crowded slum area in the capital, Dhaka, we support the government hospital with logistics and train staff in infection prevention and control measures.
Malaysia
In Penang, northwest Malaysia, we are providing health education in different languages for vulnerable people, including Rohingya and Burmese, and translations in hospitals. We have started a COVID-19 health promotion campaign for Rohingya refugees via an online Rohingya news network.
Europe
Belgium
In Belgium, an outreach team provides support to people who are staying in unauthorised places (e.g. squats) in Brussels, offering screening and medical follow-up in collaboration with two other NGOs. This team also provides health promotion, infection prevention and control, contact tracing and psychological support.
France
In France, since early June, MSF mobile teams have been providing COVID-19 vaccinations for people living on the streets or in precarious settings in Paris, and in the neighbouring departements of Seine-Saint Denis, Val-de-Marne and Yvelines. We also provide vaccinations at a dedicated site at Porte de la Villette in Paris. Our Paris-based mobile clinics provide COVID-19 antigen tests and carry out basic healthcare consultations.
In France, MSF teams have worked extensively in previous projects – especially in nursing homes – across Paris and the Île-de-France region, plus in Marseille, Reims, the regions of Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur and Occitanie, and in the département of Haute-Savoie, in the country’s east.
Protecting people living in precarious conditions
Of particular concern is how coronavirus COVID-19 might affect people in precarious environments, such as the homeless, refugees living in camps in Greece or Bangladesh, or conflict-affected populations in Yemen or Syria. These people live under harsh, often unhygienic and overcrowded conditions, where their access to healthcare is already compromised.
How can we ask people to protect themselves when they don’t have easy access to water? Or to stay at home and self-isolate if they rely on daily jobs to make ends meet, or share a room with 10 other people? Nonetheless, it is very important to inform people of protective measures (such as washing their hands often) and help ensure they have the means to protect themselves (including self-isolation in case of contact with a person infected with COVID-19).
If COVID-19 starts to be transmitted in fragile settings like these, it will be practically impossible to contain. Basic health screening and, ideally, decentralised testing for high-risk settings such as refugee camps (Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh or on the Greek islands, for example) or high-density slum dwellings (Kibera in Kenya or Khayelitsha) needs to be implemented immediately.
Keeping healthcare workers safe
Protecting healthcare workers from contracting the virus is paramount for ensuring the continuity of care for general and COVID-19-related health needs. However, global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) pose a great threat. Healthcare workers must have access to the equipment they need to do their jobs safely and effectively.
As research and development is underway to find effective treatment for coronavirus COVID-19, we are closely tracking the trials and evidence concerning the potential medicines in the pipeline.
Any drugs, tests and vaccines for COVID-19 should be made available to all those who need them. It is crucial that governments prepare to suspend or override patents for COVID-19 medical tools by issuing compulsory licences. Removing patents and other barriers will be essential in helping ensure that suppliers can sell tests and treatments at prices everyone can afford.
Challenges in ensuring continuous care in MSF projects
We want to ensure continuous care for all patients where we work today and prepare our medical teams to manage potential cases of COVID-19. Protecting patients and healthcare workers is essential, so our medical teams are also preparing for potential cases of coronavirus disease COVID-19 in our projects. This means ensuring infection prevention and control measures are in place, including setting up screening at triage zones, creating isolation areas, and providing health education.
Our projects are still able to continue medical activities, but ascertaining future supplies of certain key items, such as surgical masks, swabs, gloves and chemicals for diagnosis of COVID-19, is a concern. There is also a risk of supply shortages for other diseases due to a lack of production of generic drugs and difficulties to import essential drugs (such as antibiotics, antimalarial and antiretroviral drugs), caused by community lockdowns, reduced production of active pharmaceutical ingredients, and reduction in export movements.
We face additional challenges because travel restrictions linked to COVID-19 are limiting our ability to move staff between different countries. We are trying to find ways to manage this, to avoid heavily impacting projects needing specialist profiles, such as surgeons. However, international staff represent just eight per cent of our total global workforce, so most MSF projects are run by locally hired team members.