With hundreds of people from Somalia arriving each week in Kenya’s Dadaab Refugee Complex, living conditions in camps hosting over 233,000 refugees and thousands of new arrivals since January are worsening. Given the conditions in these overcrowded camps, there is a high risk of disease outbreaks. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges the UN Refugee Agency and Kenyan authorities to ramp up humanitarian support and urgently launch vaccination campaigns.
People from Somalia are escaping a crippling drought, violence and continuing conflict in the country. Many of those arriving are coming from southern Somalia, where measles and cholera outbreaks have occurred recently.

Dadaab currently hosts over 233,000 registered refugees, many of whom have been living in the camps for over three decades (UNHCR, July 2022). After Kenya stopped registering new arrivals in 2015, UNHCR has been carrying out periodic verification exercises to ascertain the number of unregistered refugees, so they can still receive some basic assistance. In the last such exercise earlier this year, UNHCR recorded over 45,000 unregistered refugees in Dadaab. Among them, some 11,000 are reported to have arrived this year only.
MSF has been delivering healthcare in and around Dadaab for most of the camp’s 30-year existence. Our current programmes are focused in Dagahaley camp, where we provide comprehensive healthcare to refugees and host communities, including basic and specialist care through two health posts and a 92-bed hospital. Our medical services include sexual and reproductive healthcare including emergency obstetrical surgeries, medical and