How strong is the evidence base underlying humanitarian medical assistance? How do you innovate safely to overcome the obstacles inherent in delivering care in conflict settings or to regions where no direct access to the population is possible, such as the besieged areas of Syria? Every year, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) attempts to answer some […]
Category: MSF
Leonardo Palumbo: Shorter regimens offer new hope to adults and children with MDR TB by halving treatment time
Recent treatment regimens for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) have resulted in patients enduring a gruelling two-year treatment journey, which necessitates taking up to 20 tablets every day with months of daily painful injections. The side-effects associated with the treatment results in many suffering from permanent hearing loss and some developing suicidal depression and psychosis. For those […]
Vickie Hawkins: “Your enemy’s doctor is not your enemy. Hospitals are not targets”
Late on Wednesday night two barrel bombs fell on buildings surrounding the hospital of Al Quds hospital in Aleppo, Northern Syria. As tens of wounded were being rushed to the emergency room (ER) for treatment, a third barrel bomb fell directly at the entrance to the ER, killing and injuring staff and patients. The building […]
Estrella Lasry: A more holistic response to malaria is overdue
World Malaria Day 2016 Since the early 2000s the world has seen considerable success in the fight against malaria, with a significant decrease in overall numbers of cases and deaths. But this success is uneven: there are still contexts where the toll of malaria is worsening and seasonal spikes in patient numbers are getting higher. Teams […]
Jay Achar: Drug resistant tuberculosis—not just a precursor to the post-antibiotic apocalypse
In 2015 the world woke up to the idea that the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will ultimately lead to a post-antibiotic era in which even simple medical treatments will cease to be possible. Over the past decade the infectious disease medical community has looked on in horror as NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1—an enzyme rendering […]
Grania Brigden: Step up to stop TB
Grania Brigden discusses the findings of the Out of Step report on national tuberculosis (TB) policies. The report is being launched on 2 December at the 46th Union World Conference on Lung Health, Cape Town, South Africa. TB is winning a deadly race—this year it overtook HIV as the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing 1.5 million people […]
Helen Bygrave: More people, more time, better data—what we need to “treat all” with HIV
On World AIDS Day and with the ICASA conference ongoing, Helen Bygrave discusses the implications of the recently announced World Health Organization (WHO) “treat all” policy. On the back of the headline studies Temprano, START, and new data from HPTN 052, the WHO recently announced the “treat all” policy: everyone diagnosed with HIV should start […]
An MSF nurse recounts the horror of the aerial bombardments in Kunduz
MSF nurse Lajos Zoltan Jecs was in Kunduz trauma hospital when the facility was struck by a series of aerial bombing raids in the early hours of Saturday morning. He describes his experience. “It was absolutely terrifying. I was sleeping in our safe room in the hospital. At around 2am I was woken up by […]
Alison Criado-Perez: From an insecure and dangerous present to an unknown future
It’s 10.30pm on board the Phoenix, the search and rescue vessel in the Mediterranean run jointly by @MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) and @MSF. I joined a few days ago, in a mid-sea midnight transfer. Before I go to bed, I go up on the darkened foredeck and remember how it looked yesterday, packed with […]
Helen Bygrave: Simple but elusive—why are we still talking about HIV drug delivery?
As the International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference takes place in Vancouver, Canada (July 19-22), Helen Bygrave of MSF discusses her frustrations with the lack of implementation of simple, programmatic strategies for improving HIV care. My main memory of the last IAS conference that I attended, held in Vienna in 2010, was a resounding standing ovation for a […]