On International Snakebite Awareness Day (September 19th), we heard from Dr Mark McNicol, recently returned from MSF assignment in Lankien, a remote rural area in Jonglei State, South Sudan, where being bitten by a snake can mean profound and long-term impacts for people.

MSF’s Dr Patrick Mangochi describes how a project to tackle rocketing TB infections encouraged prison inmates in Malawi to look out for the well-being of their fellow inmates as well as themselves.

While much of the world’s attention is on battling the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now reached many countries in Africa, measles continues to silently kill large numbers of mostly children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad. DRC – which has also been fighting an Ebola epidemic – declared a measles outbreak in June 2019. Chad’s measles outbreak has been raging for two years, since May 2018. CAR declared its measles outbreak in January this year.

Together, the outbreaks have infected hundreds of thousands of children and killed thousands more. Some kids die at home, never having reached proper medical care, or having been seen only by a traditional healer.