It s not only vaccines: Oxygen must be at the heart of the COVID-19 response | Médecins Sans Frontières Ireland msf.ie - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msf.ie Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
But the differences are only superficial. At its heart, our response to COVID-19 has been no different from our other medical projects.
We focus on those places where the highest numbers of people are falling sick and dying, and we look for the most vulnerable people.
During the pandemic, this approach has seen us setting up medical projects in places where we rarely work, such as the US and several countries in Europe.
It has seen us helping groups of people we don’t often help, such as residents of care homes. But our medical reasoning has not changed.
Albert Masias/MSF
Forgotten emergencies
Libya/Mediterranean Sea
Mouliom Souleman and his family were taken aboard a search and rescue ship run by MSF in partnership with Sea-Watch on August 23. Originally from Cameroon, Souleman fled Libya in search of safety in Europe. Souleman wrote that on the day of the rescue, “I found a smile again. That is after more than three years of torture, forced labor, sleepless nights…. Libya for me is hell on earth.”
Greece
In September, a series of fires destroyed Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, leaving some 12,000 people with no safe place to stay in the middle of a COVID-19 outbreak. MSF provides medical and mental health care to tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers trapped on the Greek islands. We are calling on European leaders to evacuate vulnerable people and end harmful migration policies.