Dear Friends and Supporters of MSF, and to all of you watching this,
My name is ….and I am the ED of MSF’s regional office in the UAE, where I currently am. We are going through difficult times all over the world, and like you we have concerns and fears
During such times, our organisation continues its work. Our main objectives are to:
• Secure the continuity of our medical activities wherever possible
• provide support to health authorities
• directly implement medical care for people affected by COVID19 in the different phases of the responses (awareness of the population, screening and isolation, handling of severe and critical cases, etc.).
Sustaining our projects faces some challenges because we are impacted by the current travel restrictions, which limits our ability to move staff between countries. There is also global pressure on the production of some medical supplies, in particular specialised personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. Our projects are still able to continue medical activities, but ascertaining future supplies of certain key items, such as surgical masks or gowns, is of concern.
Protecting healthcare workers and patients is essential, so our medical teams are also preparing for potential cases of COVID-19 in our projects. We must be able to receive COVID-19 patients, and make sure that no one is consequently infected in our structures, patients or staff. For the latter, this means guaranteeing evacuation procedures (medical or not), health structures we can use to refer our infected staff, and locations to relocate our staff for their own safety and security.
MSF is now responding to COVID19 in different countries, as well as repurposing some of its projects, and widening the scope of its current interventions:
• From Europe to Asia and the American continent,
• In the Arab World from Jordan to Gaza to Iraq and Yemen
• On the African continent from Burkina Faso to Mali, from Senegal to Ivory Coast, from Cameroon to South Africa, and from DRC to South Sudan
As I am speaking to you now, MSF is calling for no patents or profiteering on drugs, tests, or vaccines used for the COVID-19 pandemic, and for governments to prepare to suspend and override patents and take other measures, such as price controls, to ensure availability, reduce prices and save more lives. Medicines should not be a luxury but equal right for everyone.
We finally echo our concerns about a Covid19 outbreak in war-torn countries like Yemen and Syria as well as among homeless, migrants, and those living in refugee camps. “These people are already living under harsh conditions and their access to health care is already compromised.If an outbreak of COVID-19 were to propagate in these settings, they will face a disaster even worse than elsewhere.”
Our advice to you is to be patient and follow directives and instructions from the different health authorities. Stay Safe, Stay Strong, we are together, and together we will get through this