MSF: A Year in Pictures 2023
This collection of photos, taken between November 2022 and November 2023, highlights stories and voices from around the world where Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is working.
Over the last 12 months, multiple acute humanitarian crises have emerged. Climate change continues to take a devastating toll on people's health, and war has reached disastrous heights in several places. A brutal, deadly war has unfolded in Gaza, where attacks on health facilities put the lives of many of our staff and patients at risk. We mourn the loss of four Palestinian colleagues.
.jpg "According to the United Nations, in March 2023, tropical cyclone Freddy affected some 1.2 million people in Mozambique and 750,000 in Zambézia province. In the photo, we can see a resident from Quelimane looking at the view of an area severely impacted by a cyclone. Photographer: Martim Gray Pereira | Location: Quelimane, Zambezia Province | Date: 27/03/2023")
This image collection of 'A Year in Pictures 2023' provides a glimpse into the medical and humanitarian activities carried out by MSF teams in over 75 countries during the past 12 months. From providing basic healthcare in Venezuela, to rescuing people from the Mediterranean Sea and raising awareness of TB among neighbourhoods in the Philippines, MSF has continued to assist people and communities in need.
From the tireless work of our staff to the resilience of patients fighting for their lives in difficult circumstances, these stories bear witness to the vital importance of worldwide access to healthcare. It is an essential need that should never be taken for granted, as emphasised in each and every one of these photographs.
At around 2am, on 27 October, our medical team arrived at Jenin hospital to treat wounded people following an Israeli forces incursion on Jenin refugee camp. Two Palestinians were reportedly killed, and many more were injured. Photographer: Faris Al-Jawad| Location: Jenin| Date: 27/10/2023
Girls go to school in Band-e-Amir of Yakawalang, a remote district in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan. MSF opened a community health facility in Band-e-Amir, where there is no other health facility for women and children. The MSF-supported facility offers ante-natal care (ANC), post-natal care (PNC), delivery and maternal care, under 5 paediatric consultations, malnutrition monitoring and referrals of complicated cases. Photographer: Nava Jamshidi| Location: Afghanistan| Date: 01/04/2023
Participants of the MSF Academy for Healthcare Nursing & Midwifery initiative during their graduation in Lankien. Photographer: Alicia Gonzalez| Location: South Sudan| Date: 13/03/2023
From January to November 2023, almost half a million migrants have crossed the Darién Gap, between Colombia and Panama. Photographer: Juan Carlos Tomasi| Location: Panama| Date: 07/08/2023
Adelia sonríe al tener a su hijo José Antonio en su regazo. Con 18 años y tras horas en trabajo de parto, se siente exhausta, pero con la alegría de tener a su bebé recién nacido en brazos. Delta Amacuro, noreste de Venezuela. Photographer: Fausto Podavini| Location: Delta Amacuro, Venezuela| Date: 24/05/2023
Chad. N'Djamena. Mielizi IDP camp. Kati Abati, 30, doing 20-year-old Fidtma's hair. Both arrived in the camp from Cameron in a small boat. Kati is a hair dresser but the flood destroyed both her house and her shop and she found herself forced to take refuge in Chad because here there was the possibility of staying in a field. She would like to return to Cameron as soon as possible but she doesn't know how to do it because at the moment she has nothing left. Photographer: Fausto Podavini| Location: Mielizi camp, N'Djamena, Chad| Date: 07/12/2022
Villagers carry NFIs on their heads, as they are walking through the field to go back to their homes at a village near Sanghar, Sindh province of Pakistan on 16th November 2022. Photographer: Asim Hafeez| Location: Singhar disctrict, Sindh, Pakistan| Date: 16/11/2022
(Bird's-eye view) Siwar holds up her insulin pen while lying down among her toys in her family's makeshift home in Arsal, north Lebanon. Siwar was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at a young age and frequents the MSF clinic in town for treatment. Photographer: Carmen Yahchouchi| Location: Arsal, a border town in the Baalbeck-Hermel governorate, northeast of Lebanon | Date: 29/05/2023
In March 2023, tropical cyclone Freddy affected some 1.2 million people in Mozambique, 750,000 in Zambézia province according to the United Nations. In the photo, we can see a resident from Quelimane looking at the view of an area severely impacted by cyclone. Photographer: Martim Gray Pereira | Location: Quelimane, Zambezia Province | Date: 27/03/2023About Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a global network of principled medical and other professionals who specialise in medical humanitarian work, driven by our common humanity and guided by medical ethics. We strive to bring emergency medical care to people caught in conflicts, crises, and disasters in more than 70 countries worldwide.
In South Africa, the organisation is recognised as one of the pioneers of providing Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) in the public sector and started the first HIV programmes in South Africa in 1999. Until today, the focus of MSF’s interventions in the country has primarily been on developing new testing and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and TB in Eshowe (Kwa-Zulu Natal) and Khayelitsha (Western Cape).
In Tshwane, we run a migration project, and we offer medical and psychosocial care to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who struggle to access public health services under South Africa’s increasing restrictions.
Previously, we offered free, high-quality, confidential medical care to survivors of SGBV in Rustenburg.
To learn more about our work in South Africa, please visit this page on our website (www.msf.org.za). To support MSF’s work:
- SMS “JOIN” to 42110 to donate R30 Once-off
- Visit https://www.msf.org.za/donate
