In the first half of 2022, we offered mental health support and training for communities affected by severe floods and landslides in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco. With search and rescue activities covered by local authorities, we focused on increasing access to mental health support. Our teams trained health workers, as well as civil servants such as teachers, social workers, and community leaders, so that they could provide psychosocial support to survivors of the disaster, and also create a long-lasting local capacity to enable communities to respond to such events in the future.
Brazil 2021 © Mariana Abdalla/MSF
Brazil
Improving medical care for Venezuelan migrants, asylum seekers, and the local population.
News update
Bringing health care to the Yanomami Indigenous community in Brazil
The vast area of the Amazon Basin in Brazil has always presented challenges when it comes to providing health care to the Indigenous people living there. In recent years, the situation has become even more complex. The absence of measures to protect Indigenous communities, along with cuts to health care budgets, posed serious threats to the welfare and, in some cases, the very survival of these communities.
In February, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) joined the the Ministry of Health in responding to the crisis, sending a team to provide medical care and mental health support at the CASAI, a health center for Indigenous people in Boa Vista, the capital of northern Roraima state. When medical care is unavailable locally, Indigenous people are referred to the CASAI, where they can receive basic health care as well as a place to stay while waiting for medical consultations at hospitals or clinics in Boa Vista.
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Our work in Brazil
In 2022, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) conducted activities to assist the growing numbers of Venezuelan migrants arriving in Brazil. We also provided mental health care for people affected by floods and landslides.
What's happening in Brazil
The end of border closures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a huge increase in new arrivals at the end of 2021. The number of Venezuelans who crossed the border surpassed 160,000 in 2022, more than in the two previous years combined. This placed an additional strain on already overburdened local health care facilities in Brazil.
How we're helping in Brazil
MSF scaled up our response in the northern state of Roraima, assisting with the provision of general health care, health promotion, mental health support, and sexual and reproductive health services, by running mobile clinics in migrant hotspots, shelters and informal settlements in the capital, Boa Vista, and in Pacaraima.
We also provided medical assistance to indigenous communities from Venezuela in rural areas around Pacaraima. These migrants are particularly vulnerable due to the barriers they face in accessing the public health system.
How we're helping
5,520
Outpatient consultations
1,350
Individual mental health consultations
540
Mental health consultations provided in group sessions
*Data from MSF International Activity Report 2022
More news and stories
Learn about MSF’s journalistic roots and our commitment to bear witness and speak out about the plight of the people we treat.
News Jan 25, 2022
Brazil: MSF cares for growing numbers of Venezuelan migrants and asylu...
Read MoreLearn about MSF’s journalistic roots and our commitment to bear witness and speak out about the plight of the people we treat.
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