Around 100,000 people risk losing access to medical aid, as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is given notice to end activities in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. MSF is deeply worried by the announcement and the impartial medical organisation is urgently seeking means to stay in order to continue to provide lifesaving healthcare.

MSF continues to seek dialogue at the highest level with the Government of Bangladesh to understand what can be done to turn the situation around. 

MSF’s health centre, located in Kutupalong, provides comprehensive medical assistance to an average of 5,000 people every month – just under half of whom are children under five.

Each month, MSF provides around 1,300 antenatal consultations, 250 postnatal consultations, and performs 50 deliveries, as well as treating 200 people in the in-patient department – half of whom are children suffering from severe malnutrition.

Other activities include mental healthcare, therapeutic feeding for malnourished children, emergency obstetric care, and referrals.

MSF has provided assistance to people in the Cox’s Bazaar area since 1992, and has run its clinic in Kutupalong for several years. During this time, MSF has witnessed an unchanging need for humanitarian medical aid among the Bangladesh host community, and large number of Rohingya refugees (registered and unregistered) in the area, equal numbers of whom access the free medical services.

MSF requests all stake holders, Governments and the international community, to recognise the urgent need for ongoing lifesaving medical care for these highly vulnerable people.