A YEAR IN PICTURES - Doctors Without Borders
Doctor Without Borders (MSF)
Throughout the year, our photographers have been alongside MSF's doctors, nurses, midwives, logisticians and other staff, on the frontline of our projects around the world. They have been there to bear witness, not only to the work done by our dedicated medical teams, but also, unflinchingly, to the intimate circumstances that surround each individual's story.
We bid farewell to 2016 as a tumultuous year of political turnarounds, hardening attitudes toward refugees and migration, and continuing devastating conflicts. Of the more than 10,000 photographs taken in MSF project locations last year we have selected 50 striking photographs we would like to share with you.
Whether you read it in the courage and determination MSF fieldworkers’ medical response in South Sudan, Yemen or Syria; see it in the faces of people rescued at sea in the Mediterranean; or feel it in the tenderest shared moment between a mother and her daughter amidst the crisis and turmoil, in Nigeria – the indomitable spirit of survival and caring has prevailed in 2016.
MSF teams go door-to-door to test people for HIV in Katwe, Uganda. Photographer: Guillaume Binet/MYOP
A couple share a moment in the sunlight in a makeshift refugee camp set up in the shadow of the docks in Piraeus, near Athens. Some 5,000 people who intended to travel north found themselves stuck in the Greek capital when the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia closed its borders in March. Photographer: Guillaume Binet/MYOP
A fisherman on Lake Chilwa in Malawi takes an oral cholera vaccine as part of MSF's efforts to stem a cholera outbreak in Machinga, Phalombe and Zomba districts. Photographer: Aurelie Baumel/MSF
A five-year-old child recovers from surgery to his abdomen after being hit by shrapnel in an airstrike on Al Sukkari neighbourhood in east Aleppo. Photographer: KARAM ALMASRI
A girl waits in the emergency room of Boost hospital, Lashkar Gah, in Afghanistan's Helmand province, which MSF runs alongside the Afghan Ministry of Health. Photographer: Kadir Van Lohuizen/Noor
A mother carries her two children to Tchabi health centre to receive polio vaccinations during a community healthcare and health promotion programme run by MSF in Boga, Democratic Republic of Congo. Photographer: Gabrielle Klein/MSF
A volunteer MSF health worker sits in the back of a mobile medical clinic, run from a van, that serves the population of Mayorsk, Ukraine, near the frontline between government and opposition forces. Photographer: Christopher Nunn/MSF
A woman adjusts her veil in MSF's clinic in Harandi, Tehran, which provides medical and psychological care for vulnerable women and children, drug users and their families, sex workers, Afghan child workers and the gypsy community, amongst others. Photographer: Mahsa Ahrabi-Fard
A woman and her children shelter in a camp on the outskirts of Amran, in northern Yemen, for people displaced from their homes by fighting between Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition. Photographer: Rawan Shaif
A woman from Ivory Coast cries after been rescued from a boat in distress on the Mediterranean. She was one of 435 people rescued from three separate boats on a single day in May by the MSF search and rescue ship Dignity I. Photographer: Anna Surinyach/MSF
A woman receives medical care at MSF's family and sexual violence clinic in Tari hospital, Hela province, in the highlands region of Papua New Guinea. She sought treatment for lacerations after her husband cut her with a knife on the back of her head and both hands. Photographers: Jodi Bieber
A young Syrian man waits in the City Plaza hotel, Athens, for a response to his relocation application following a journey by sea to reach Europe. More than 50,000 people found themselves trapped in refugee camps and temporary hotel accommodation in Greece after the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia closed its border with Greece. Photographer: Sara Prestianni
A young boy sleeps in his family's tent in Khanaqin refugee camp in northern Iraq. In the camp, MSF provides mental healthcare, treatment for non-communicable diseases and health promotion activities for people displaced by violence in neighbouring regions. Photographer: Ton Koene
A young girl receives a measles vaccination on the first day of an MSF vaccination campaign in Kolo, Bas-Uele province, Democratic Republic of Congo. Photographer: Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi
An MSF health worker communicates with an HIV-positive man who became deaf and blind after he stopped taking his antiretroviral drugs due to social stigma. MSF teams go door-to-door to test people for HIV in Katwe, Uganda. Photographer: Guillaume Binet/MYOP
An MSF staff member monitors a boy with suspected rabies after he was bitten in the head by a dog. Forced to evacuate Leer hospital after it was attacked by armed men, the MSF team is working in an abandoned building. If the boy tests positive for rabies, there is little the medical staff will be able to do to save him. Photographer: Dominic Nahr
An MSF staff member surveys the ruins of MSF's hospital in Haydan, Yemen, after it was destroyed by airstrikes. Photographer: Atsuhiko Ochiai
An MSF-supported hospital in east Aleppo is protected with sandbags after it was hit by numerous airstrikes in April, killing one doctor and injuring several nurses. Photographer: KARAM ALMASRI
Ashley, 19, is a member of an HIV youth support group at MSF's Epworth clinic on Harare's outskirts. The group focuses on getting across the message to young people and adolescents that they are not alone and that, with medication, they can live healthy and full lives. The sessions also tackle difficult subjects including how to break the news to a partner that you are HIV-positive. Photographer: Rachel Corner/De Beeldunie
Children crowd around as an MSF health worker screens a young boy for malnutrition at the start of a mass vaccination campaign in Central African Republic. Photographer: Pierre-Yves Bernard/MSF
Eight-month-old Ayashi Ibrahim lies on a bed in Al Thawra hospital, Hodeidah, Yemen, suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which is life-threatening. The conflict in Yemen has caused severe food shortages, and this is the second time Ayashi has been admitted to the hospital's malnutrition centre. Photographer: Rawan Shaif
Fedia Fontenel, aged nine, burnt her hand in the kitchen of her home in Mariani. Three times a week she meets with Josue Toussaint, an MSF social worker, for physiotherapy at the burns unit in Drouillard hospital, Port-au-Prince. Photographer: Corentin Fohlen
Firas Hebili, an MSF cultural mediator, talks to people crowded on board a rubber dinghy during a rescue off the northern coast of Libya. Photographer: Borja Ruiz Rodriguez/MSF
Four-month-old Mary James grasps the finger of a nurse in MSF's hospital in the UN compound in Malakal, South Sudan, where she is being treated for tuberculosis. Some 48,000 people fled for safety to the UN compound after Malakal town was caught up in fighting between government and rebel forces. Photographer: Anna Surinyach/MSF
Health workers examine a child with suspected malnutrition and malaria in an MSF-supported hospital in the Magaria region in southern Niger. The rainy season corresponds to the lean season, so malaria and malnutrition peaks coincide. For children in particular, this period of the year represents a real fight for survival. Photographer: Louise Annaud/MSF
Herro, from Iraqi Kurdistan, carries her four-year-old son across the mud to her tent in the Grande Synthe refugee camp in Dunkirk, northern France. Photographer: Jon Levy/MSF
Iwath, from Iraq, protests against border controls outside a reception centre for migrants and refugees near Sid, Serbia. "We want freedom and a future - we don't have freedom in my country. I want to continue my journey, I can't go back." Photographer: Alex Yallop/MSF
Kale Mantkava rests in his room in the tuberculosis hospital in Abastumani, a spa town in Georgia's mountainous Meskheti region. The sanatorium was built in the 1920s and continues to serve its original purpose to this day, though only 70 of its 200-or-so rooms are in a good enough state to house patients. MSF has worked here since 2014. Photographer: Daro Sulakauri/MSF
MSF doctor Pierre Vachaud shares a joke with a young man from Eritrea aboard an MSF search and rescue ship as the crew prepare to land on the coast of Italy. Photographer: Sara Creta
MSF psychologists carry out a consultation with a woman in Tumaco, Colombia. MSF teams provide comprehensive mental health support for victims of the armed conflict and other types of violence, especially sexual violence, in the urban area of Tumaco. Photographer: Lena Mucha/MSF
MSF staff care for a baby in the newly-renovated intensive care unit of Sulaymaniyah emergency hospital, which is the only trauma facility for more than 2.5 million people in the region, including many people displaced from neighbouring conflict zones. Photographer: Sonia Balleron
MSF teams in Malakal worked through the nights of 17 and 18 February to treat the injured after fighting erupted in the UN compound. Much of the compound was destroyed and 18 people were killed, including two South Sudanese MSF staff members. Photographer: MSF
Mirza Hossain, from Afghanistan, travels with his family by bus to the ferry terminal on the island of Samos, from where they plan to travel on to Piraeus, on mainland Greece. MSF had stepped in to provide hotel accommodation for eight families from Afghanistan and Syria who were left without shelter on the island as a storm approached. Photographer: Guillaume Binet/MYOP
On board MSF's search and rescue ship Dignity I, people celebrate their rescue from a boat in distress. Some 435 people were rescued, most of them from Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast and Senegal. Photographer: Anna Surinyach/MSF
People wait to be rescued from a dinghy next to the bodies of people who died during a crossing of the Mediterranean sea. MSF teams rescued 246 people and discovered 25 dead bodies on the boat. Photographer: Borja Ruiz Rodriguez/MSF
Photographer: Dominic Nahr
Wading at dusk through the swamplands of Unity state, an MSF staff member carries a young boy as his family make their way to the relative safety of Kok island, where more than 2,000 people are sheltering from conflict. Photographer: Dominic Nahr
Wasira makes regular visits to MSF's mobile clinic, which operates in Kirkuk and in Salahedin, to get treatment for high blood pressure. Like many in the region, she has been displaced from her home and her current living conditions are poor. "We get the water from the canal - they truck it all the way here - but it's not drinkable, it needs treating. Some people died on account of the water. And then of course there is no electricity. But at least here we are safe." Photographer: Baudouin Nach/MSF