2024: A year in pictures
Over the past 12 months, Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) teams have witnessed the continuation and escalation of conflicts, such as those in Gaza and Sudan, where unabated wars have raged into a second year. Our teams were also there for people and families seeking safety throughout the year, whether at the Mexico border or onboard our search and rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
This collection of photos, taken between December 2023 and December 2024, features the highs and lows we, and those we assist, experience as we provide medical and humanitarian assistance in over 70 countries. They show the breaking points—such as when we had to suspend activities in Haiti’s capital—but also resilience and joy, as when we witnessed a mother meeting her baby for the first time in South Sudan. These photos show how bearing witness can create a point of connection.
Medical care provides relief in the most difficult of circumstances, and we remain inspired by our staff’s commitment to deliver this care to people, even as the obstacles to doing so increase around us.
A nurse walks through the room where patients received the diphtheria antitoxin, while a patient is reflected in the glass door as she talks to visitors at the Centre de Traitement Epidemiologique in Siguiri, Guinea. Visitors stand behind a fence to create a two-meter-wide barrier to prevent the spread of diphtheria. MSF has helped treat over 2100 patients as of 4 January 2024, and since August 2023 has been responding to a diphtheria outbreak in the region—the likes of which has not been seen in the country for the last 30 years. | © Andrej Ivanov/MSF
Families sheltering in Rafah, South Gaza. © MSF
Christopher Lockyear, secretary general, holds up an image of the destroyed MSF shelter in Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, Gaza. An MSF staff member’s wife and daughter-in-law were killed and six other people were injured when an Israeli tank fired on a clearly marked MSF staff shelter on February 20, 2024. Lockyear called on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to demand an immediate and sustained ceasefire in Gaza. Addressing the Council at its monthly meeting on Gaza, Lockyear also called for the unequivocal protection of medical facilities, staff, and patients. © UN Photo/Loey Felipe
Eric, 25, arrived yesterday from Minova. Determined to protect his family and concerned about the state of his parents' health, he immediately set about building a tent for them. | 17 February 2024 © Marion Molinari/MSF
The MSF construction team walk on the roof of a new building under construction in the Khost Maternity Hospital compound. | 22 December 2023 © Paul Odongo/MSF
People working in a rice mill located at the entrance to Makurdi town, capital of Benue State, are sifting rice and separating grains. Because of the importance of agriculture in the state, Benue is known as the food basket of Nigeria. | Makurdi, Benue, North Central Nigeria, December 2023. © Kasia Strek
Dooshima was given a whistle at the MSF star clinic. This object is given to protect all the survivors who are living in a situation that is particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. | Mbawa IDP camp, Benue, North Central Nigeria, December 2023. © Kasia Strek
The aftermath of battles between armed groups and police forces in Haiti. | 16 March 2024 © Corentin Fohlen/Divergence
Al Shifa medical complex in Gaza after 14 days of siege by the Israeli forces. | 1 April 2024 © MSF
Ita Joice, 27, meets her baby girl during her caesarean section in Mundari County Hospital—the only secondary healthcare facility in Kajo Keji, Central Equatoria, South Sudan. | 25 March 2024 © Manon Massiat/MSF
A pregnant Sudanese woman visits a midwife for a prenatal consultation in a displaced persons camp in Adré, Ouaddaï region, Chad. | 3 Feb 2024 © Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi
Shahid Khan helps his son Abdul Rehman with his homework inside their home in Machar Colony, Pakistan. Shahid Khan has successfully completed his hepatitis C treatment. | 24 April 2024 © Asim Hafeez
Displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip carry their belongings as they leave their homes following an evacuation order by the Israeli army. | 6 May 2024 © MSF
Displaced people in Gaza return to Khan Yunis and Rafah. | 6 May 2024 © MSF
MSF’s Munira Gulomova conducts a mental health consultation with Akmal Uganov, 25, at his home in the city of Tursunzoda, Tajikistan. Uganov fell ill with tuberculosis in 2019. | 15 May 2024 © MSF
Hin So, MSF midwife activity manager, checks on a newborn baby at Nasser Hospital, southern Gaza. | 23 June 2024 © Mariam Abu Dagga/MSF
Adre border crossing point between Chad and Sudan. By April 2024 more than 600,000 people had fled the war in Sudan to seek refuge in Chad since April 2023, this number is now more than 800,000. | 19 April 2024 © Corentin Fohlen/Divergence
A mother and child inside the therapeutic feeding center for malnourished children at the MSF Hospital in Metche, in eastern Chad. Metche camp hosts about 40,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled violence in Darfur. | 7 August 2024 © Finbarr O’Reilly/VII Photo.
The 38-kilometer trip from Agok to Abyei in Sudan takes over 6 hours due to poor roads. MSF uses a tractor to navigate mud bogs. The road conditions prevent water and sanitation trucks from reaching Abyei. | 29 August 2024 © Aurélie Lécrivain/MSF
Julienne, a resident of the Kingabwa district in the commune of Limete has witnessed floods for several years now. This time she refused to leave her flooded home due to lack of accommodation in which to shelter with her whole family. Standing in front of her door, she waits for her children who have gone to school with a canoe. | 18 January 2024 © MSF
While shopping with her mother at a nearby market, this 20-month-old toddler was struck by shrapnel after a bomb-blast tore through the neighbourhood. Along with other casualties the unnamed girl was brought to the Bashair Training Hospital in South Khartoum, Sudan. During the xray a part of the girls skull cap fell onto the table. An MSF emergency team operated on the girl and managed to save her life. | 7 November 2024 © MSF
Halitare Abdi Sene rolls down a water jerrycan alongside her two sons after fetching it from an MSF water point in the outskirts of Dagahaley refugee camp, Kenya. | 17 August 2024 © Zainab Mohammed/MSF
MSF van crossing a wooden bridge, a short distance away from a primary healthcare facility MSF is supporting in Cross River state. The wooden bridge was constructed after the concrete bridge collapsed. It is now old too, so, MSF van must cross without passengers to reduce weight. An MSF logistician guides the van as it drives across the wooden bridge. | 19 April 2024 © Abba Adamu Musa/MSF
Following the explosion of a fuel tanker in Mirogôane, Haiti, many injured people were treated at various MSF facilities. One of them, Kenol Coman, has extensive severe burns on several parts of his body, and was treated at the MSF trauma hospital in Carrefour. | 18 September 2024 © Quentin Bruno Vanbergen/MSF
Omar stands in the rubble of his home after it was bulldozed by Israeli forces in Jenin refugee camp. | 12 September 2024 © Alexandre Marcou/MSF
Ezdihar al Diqa, 39, and her daughter Nouraya, 14, in the room they now share with 14 other people in the Azariye displaced persons camp in the center of the Lebanese capital. | Beirut, Lebanon, 11 October 2024 © Antoni Lallican/Hans Lucas
Karam, 17, from Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza, during a physiotherapy session at MSF's Reconstructive Surgery Hospital in Amman, Jordan. Karam nearly died after his family's house was leveled by an Israeli airstrike. He suffered severe burns to his face and other areas of his body, and also suffered a serious injury to his arm. He is receiving comprehensive reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy at the MSF hospital in Amman. | 27 August 2024 © Moises Saman/Magnum Photos
Health promoter Aisha B (28) accompanies 80-year-old Aisha G to the MSF clinic in Adré transit camp, eastern Chad. | 30 July 2024 © Ante Bussmann/MSF
Maryam gets a supply of supplementary feeding product as she stays in the intensive care ward of MSF’s inpatient nutrition hospital in Maiduguri, Nigeria, with her mother Maryam. | 28 August 2024 © Abba Adamu Musa/MSF
Syrian refugee Kazem, 20, and his sister Marimar, 14, hold their kittens in a parking lot in the city of Saida, south of Lebanon, where Syrian refugees have found refuge after the Israeli escalation. After escaping Israeli airstrikes in the town they had called home for over a decade, they fled for twelve hours on foot to finally find relative safety in Saida. A few days later, Kazem and one of his sisters made a dangerous trip back to their former home on a borrowed motorcycle to rescue their two kittens, Simba and Mimi. “We thought of them as we were leaving,” Marimar says, “but the airstrikes were too close. I’m so relieved we could go back for them.” | 16 October 2024 © Dalia Khamissy
