Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) manages the paediatric, nutrition, intensive case, internal medicine, maternity and surgical departments at the Bossangoa regional hospital in the Central African Republic. The organisation also offers mental health consultations to the hospital’s patients. MSF also supports a one health centres and three health post in the area, where it provides ambulatory consultations, sexual and reproductive healthcare, organises vaccinations and the manages malnutrition cases.

In this region, improved access to health facilities alongside health promotion and outreach activities have increased the number of cases of malnutrition and malaria being treated at the hospital. The facility has already treated more complicated severe malnutrition cases in the first eight months of 2018 (721) than throughout all of 2017 (671). In September 2018, the 45-bed nutrition department had over 80 patients suffering from malnutrition in its ward, most of them under five.

Malnutrition and malaria are closely link, and the first eight months of 2018 saw a 49 percent increase in the number of malaria cases treated, compared with 2017. Seventy-eight percent of the patients tested positive, making a total of 138,675 patients treated for malaria in that period. To improve the detection and the treatment of malaria cases, MSF continues to support 14 mobile malaria clinics (known as Point Palu) in this region.