Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to present here today.
Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF as we are commonly known, is an international medical humanitarian organization that provides impartial medical assistance to people in more than 70 countries. We deliver essential health services in some of the world's most complex environments, and we are no stranger to public health emergencies.
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our operational response has been swift and comprehensive. Our operations have prioritized the protection of our staff around the world, focused our COVID-19 activities on the most vulnerable people and ensured the continuity of the medical care that we provide.
There is too often a tendency to focus on the emergency that is immediately in front of us—in this case, COVID-19—to the neglect of other health services. We have worked hard to make sure that all of our field teams are prepared to respond to and prevent COVID-19 cases, but also to respond to the additional needs and gaps that are being created or exacerbated as a result of the pandemic.
In the more than 70 countries where MSF is responding to emergencies, we focused on closing gaps in the COVID response: ensuring staff protection and infection prevention and control practices in hospitals and clinics; providing health promotion; responding to COVID in close settings such as camps and prisons; providing care for moderate, severe and critically ill patients who require more advanced interventions like oxygen therapy or a ventilator; and responding to the collateral health effects that have been created by the pandemic.
I want to focus on these collateral effects, because they often take place outside of the full view of the pandemic. A significant lesson from the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014-16 is that the biggest threat to women's and girls' lives was not the Ebola virus, but the shutdown of routine health services and people's fear of going to health facilities where they could get infected. Thousands more lives were lost when safe delivery, neonatal and family planning services became inaccessible due to the outbreak. Right now, we are witnessing the same dynamic on a much larger scale.
In places such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Colombia, Central African Republic and elsewhere, women and girls face challenges related not only to COVID-19 but also to closures and cuts to sexual and reproductive health services; movement restrictions including travel bans, lockdowns and curfews; global supply chain disruptions; and many other ripple effects that have been created by the pandemic.
Everyday health needs do not go away in the face of the pandemic. People continue to need access to emergency obstetric care to manage complicated deliveries. People need access to anti-malarials to prevent and treat malaria. Children need routine vaccinations to prevent measles, polio and other diseases. Antiretroviral therapies need to be continued for people living with HIV. The list goes on and on.
Yet these health services are exactly what we are seeing disrupted. Vector control spraying to reduce the mosquito population to control malaria hasn't been done, leading to a rise in malaria cases in some of our projects in South Sudan. The number of infections there was so high that our teams didn't delay treatment while waiting for confirmed tests, since over 80% of our patients tested positive. Elsewhere, routine vaccination campaigns in many countries have been delayed. In Mosul, Iraq, the main government hospital was repurposed as a COVID-19 treatment centre and MSF started seeing much higher numbers of pregnant women coming in for delivery care.
It is critical, especially in the midst of this pandemic, that the Canadian government continue to protect humanitarian responses in emergencies around the world by continuing to provide international assistance funding, not only to the response to COVID but to maintain emergency and essential health services generally. Moreover, Canada needs to continue to advocate for humanitarian access in an increasingly complex and highly regulated world where permissions to enter or transit through countries are complicated by entry and exit requirements, fewer international flights and other barriers. To that end, we're grateful for the support that the Canadian government has provided in overcoming some of these access barriers.
The protected status of independent humanitarian assistance needs to continue to be assured, demonstrating day in and day out that our commitment to providing independent, impartial and neutral humanitarian assistance is the only way our teams can access patients and communities in conflicts, across front lines.
The early waves of COVID may not have hit communities where MSF is present as badly as we had feared, but the pandemic is far from over. The ripple effects continue to be felt. Global demand for PPE and other medical products remains high and is distorting price and availability. Significant questions remain about how and when COVID-19 vaccines will reach people in conflict settings, refugee camps and areas where humanitarian access is difficult.
What is clear is that a high level of vigilance is needed to prepare for and respond to COVID cases while also ensuring that routine health needs do not go unmet and we don't lose sight of everyday emergencies.
As just one example, yesterday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the 11th Ebola outbreak was declared over. For much of this year, the country was responding to two Ebola outbreaks, the largest measles epidemic in the world, and COVID-19, all in a country that has been affected by armed conflict and other protracted humanitarian crises for decades.
We look forward to your questions, and you can contact either Jason Nickerson or me through the committee clerk, if you wish.
