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Doctors Without Borders

latest news & developments
Four toilets, built in 2013 by the organisation Candice Andisiwe Sehoma founded, are still flushing, although floods of raw sewage flow daily through the streets of Alexandra. (Sean Christie)
AIDS

Building toilets, fighting TB: Candice Andisiwe Sehoma’s life of activism

From discontinued insulin pens to overpriced TB drugs, meet the young South African holding drug makers to account on behalf of patients

  • Sean Christie
10 min read
No vote: The election posters may be up but many people in eastern DRC haven’t received their voters’ cards. Photo: Alexis Huguet/AFP
PRESIDENT FELIX TSHISEKEDI

Ahead of DR Congo vote, people in volatile east feel abandoned

Much of the region is prey to armed groups, an aftermath of regional wars in the 1990s and 2000s

  • Alexis Huguet
4 min read
In DRC camps women face stark choice: hunger or rape. (Photo by Fabio Teixeira/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
CAMPS

In DRC camps, women face stark choice: hunger or rape

Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into camps around the city of Goma, a crisis triggered by M23 rebels

  • Alexis Huguet
4 min read
Bern-Thomas Nyang’wa the first Malawian doctor to work for MSF
BERN THOMAS NYANG WA

Malawian doctor leads ‘kinder’ TB breakthrough

Treatment consisting of four drugs showed 89% of patients were cured, compared with 52% getting the more complicated tuberculosis treatment

  • The Continent
2 min read
The World Health Organisation has enlisted a team of South African researchers to produce a new mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, but with no recipe to follow, it’s not an easy task. (Photo by Patrick Hertzog/AFP via Getty Images)
AFRICA

South Africa at the start of a Covid-19 vaccine the world has never seen

The World Health Organisation has enlisted a team of South African researchers to produce a new mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, but with no recipe to follow, it’s not an easy task

  • Laura López González
7 min read
AFRICA

Sharing the secrets of making a Covid-19 vaccine isn’t enough. Here’s why

For all the excitement generated by the news of an mRNA vaccine hub being established in South Africa, the country is still going to need help making Covid-19 jabs

  • Adèle Sulcas
  • Mia Malan
10 min read
CHRISTOS CHRISTOU

Covid resources: Developing countries at the mercy of their wealthier counterparts

Last week, WTO members had another chance to level the playing field by sponsoring the Trips waiver for Covid-19 medical tools. They chose not to

  • Eunice Masson
3 min read
Last week, Sudanese pharmacists demonstrate against medicine shortages during the struggle against the coronavirus pandemic, also in the capital. (Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency)
CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR SUDANESE DOCTORS

Doctors under siege in Sudan

Healthcare workers in the country are quitting because of assaults and inadequate PPE

  • Ayin Network
9 min read
The coronavirus outbreak has left millions at the mercy of the country’s warring factions, which will not stop fighting, despite an escalating humanitarian emergency. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP)
ARABIAN PENINSULA

Covid-19 deepens the crisis in war-torn Yemen

The coronavirus outbreak has left millions at the mercy of the country’s warring factions, which will not stop fighting, despite an escalating humanitarian emergency

  • Haris Zargar
8 min read
Uncertain future: Tabu Raida sits for a portrait in the Imvepi settlement for refugees that have fled from South Sudan to Uganda. (Adriane Ohanesian & Gael Cloarec/Getty Images)
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

‘Any trigger can lead to suicide’

For South Sudanese refugees, fleeing war and sexual violence is only the beginning of their struggles, writes Amanda Sperber from northern Uganda. This story was produced in…

  • Amanda Sperber
6 min read
City of Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato along with other officials held a media briefing at their Covid-19 lockdown facility in Strandfontein followed by a tour of the large marquee tents. The media presence incited many of the people in the tents that was quickly stopped after media was urged to move along. The City of Cape Town’s Covid-19 lockdown encampment in Strandfontein for up to 4000 homeless people from around the greater city area. (David Harrison/M&G)
CHRIS NISSEN

Strandfontein homeless site more a prison than a place of safety — Human rights report

Independent reports slam Cape Town’s Covid-19 homeless site, the city says things have improved since independent monitors visited the site

  • Lester Kiewit
6 min read
Despite the long history of medical racism, any potential Covid-19 vaccines must be tested in Africa — but not only on the continent. (Reuters)
AFRICA

My late uncle, and the ethics of clinical trials in Africa

Despite the long history of medical racism, any potential Covid-19 vaccines must be tested in Africa — but not only on the continent

  • Lydia Namubiru, The Continent
6 min read
Europe’s far-right nationalists are closing their borders and using Covid-19 as a guise to deport and deny entry to refugees and asylum seekers.
CHINA

Far right uses coronavirus to scapegoat refugees

Europe’s far-right nationalists are closing their borders and using Covid-19 as a guise to deport and deny entry to refugees and asylum seekers

  • Haris Zargar
8 min read
People comfort the sister of a Muslim man who was kidnapped, held for ransom and then murdered when his family could not pay the amount demanded by kidnappers in Paoua town, Central African Republic, January 27, 2018. As CAR’s numerous rebel groups continue to spliter and multiply, banditry and extortion have become the norm of the day for civilians in lawless areas.
ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

4.6 million people, one psychologist: The Central African Republic’s mental health crisis

Meet the Central African Republic’s only practising clinical psychologist

  • Simon Allison
  • Will Baxter
8 min read
Africans can lead the charge to decolonise the profit-driven biomedical system by challenging European and American claims to prioritised access to the Covid-19 vaccine.
AGENCY

Second Ebola vaccine introduced in the DRC

It said the new vaccine, produced by a Belgian subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, is aimed at protecting 50 000 people over a period of four months

  • Agency
2 min read