12-21 | On December 12th, a group of armed men stopped an MSF ambulance in Port-au-Prince. They took a patient out by force and killed him. MSF is suspending all activities in the Emergency Centre indefinitely.At 4:00 p.m., a severely wounded man was admitted to MSF’s Emergency Centre in Turgeau, a neighbourhood close to the city centre of Port-au-Prince. The patient’s condition was critical, and the medical team decided to transfer him to another hospital where he could receive the necessary specialised care.
12-20 | Three years into its campaign to have noma recognised as a neglected tropical disease (NTD), Médecins Sans Frontières welcomes the decision by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), to include noma in the WHO’s official list of NTDs.
12-12 | In the Democratic Republic of Congo’s western province of Equateur, the people in the Bolomba health zone have been affected by an Mpox outbreak over the past months. From the end of August to mid-October 2023, an MSF emergency team was on-site to help health authorities treat patients and combat the spread of the disease.
12-11 | On December 8, the United Nations Security Council failed to adopt a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza—blocked by a veto from the United States. The Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. This followed a letter from the UN Secretary-General invoking Article 99 to call on the Security Council to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.
12-7 | Since the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, collapsed on 1 December, aerial and ground attacks by Israeli forces have resulted in hundreds of people killed and injured. Two hospitals supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – Al-Aqsa in the Middle Area and Nasser in the south of the Strip – where MSF Palestinian and international staff are working and living, are barely able to cope with the influx of patients.