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.”
2-19 | Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) welcomes the Malaysian government’s reassurances that undocumented migrants who come forward for free COVID-19 vaccinations will not be arrested but urges this must also be reflected in its official health policy.
2-3 | As a highly infectious new strain of COVID-19 spreads through Southern Africa, health workers in Mozambique, Eswatini and Malawi are struggling to treat escalating numbers of patients with little prospect of a vaccine to protect them from the virus. International medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) calls for COVID-19 vaccines to be distributed equitably, prioritising and protecting frontline health workers and people at highest risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 in all countries, including in Africa.
1-20 | The health system in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, has collapsed for the second time. Although the hospitals have been adding COVID-19 bed capacity at an astonishing rate, the numbers of new patients have continued to grow even faster, meaning the entire health system is saturated and overloaded. More seriously, the city’s capacity to produce oxygen is running at less than a third of the current needs, leaving some hospitals unable to ventilate patients and reportedly resulting in people dying of asphyxiation.
1-19 | As of December 2020, there are over 450,000 cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines – nearly half of which have been detected in the densely populated region of Metro Manila.Densely populated communities Protecting people from the COVID-19 pandemic is especially challenging in Manila. Allen Borja, an Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) nurse in the MSF project in Tondo, Manila, describes his visits to the slums.