3-24 | Since February, another heavy wave of COVID-19 has swept through the West Bank. Over 20,000 patients are currently being treated for COVID-19. This has added further pressure to an already fragile healthcare system, leaving medical staff struggling to provide adequate care to a soaring number of patients. Both the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authorities must immediately, as a matter of the utmost priority, significantly increase efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 and its new variants.
3-10 | MSF International President appeals to governments stonewalling on landmark proposal Geneva, 9 March 2021—As governments prepare to meet for another round of talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) tomorrow, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) urged the small number of governments that continue to block a landmark waiver on intellectual property (IP) during the pandemic to immediately reverse their stonewalling and allow formal negotiations at the WTO to start.
2-26 | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will meet tomorrow to discuss emergency use authorization of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine candidate. If the vaccine is approved, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls on J&J to send its first shipments to COVAX for low- and middle-income countries, rather than high-income countries.
2-24 | Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says the decision by the Malaysian Government to deport 1,086 Myanmar nationals from Malaysia, despite a court order to temporarily halting the deportation, sets a dangerous precedent.MSF’s Head of Mission Dirk van der Tak says: “This deportation takes place only weeks after the military coup in Myanmar. The recent unlawful arrests and detainment of healthcare workers, and people from the wider general public in Myanmar, are a clear indication that the safety of the deportees cannot be guaranteed upon return.”
2-24 | The COVAX Facility today announced the delivery of its first COVID-19 vaccine doses to Ghana. This first delivery from the COVAX Facility comes over two months after the first people started receiving COVID-19 vaccines in wealthy countries. As World Health Organization head Dr. Tedros Adhanom recently pointed out, 10 countries have currently administered 75 percent of all vaccinations worldwide, while 130 countries hadn’t yet received a single dose.