Angola 2017 © Bruno Fonseca

Angola

Update

Handing over our medical activities

In August 2023, we closed our projects in Angola and handed over all medical activities to the Angolan Ministry of Health.

Our Work in Angola

In 2022, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) returned to Angola to improve pediatric care for malnutrition and malaria and prepare for the possible consequences of drought on health.

What's Happening in Angola

In 2021, UN agencies sounded the alarm following three consecutive years of severe drought in Angola, and forecast that soaring food prices, combined with poor harvests, could have an impact on child malnutrition, particularly in southern provinces. In preparation, MSF carried out assessments and started medical activities in several areas in 2022.

How we’re helping in Angola

We worked in close collaboration with the health authorities, as well as with local communities, to open a project aimed at reducing child deaths and strengthening the existing health care system, particularly pediatric services, in the western province of Benguela. Through this project, we improved the early detection of malnutrition for children in the community, increased access to health facilities by organizing referrals, and provided much-needed treatment and medical equipment.

As well as supporting San Pedro hospital’s malnutrition intensive care unit and five other outpatient malnutrition care facilities, we conducted health promotion activities in the community, targeting children under five years old for screening, and their parents for health education in the municipalities of Lobito and Catumbela.

In mid-2022, we sent a second assessment team to the southwestern province of Huila to prepare for a preventive intervention, as the climate and harvesting conditions had not improved, and food prices and inflation remained high.

In the municipalities of Cuvango and Chipindo, which have a combined population of about 130,000, rapid nutrition assessments carried out by MSF in the last quarter of the year did not show alarming rates of malnutrition. The drought was also not as serious as predicted; land was being cultivated and there were sufficient livestock available in the areas we assessed.

Consequently, while maintaining a malnutrition component in our activities, we focused on increasing access to preventive and curative care for malaria.

STAFF IN 2022 (FULL-TIME EQUIVALENT)

1983

YEAR MSF FIRST WORKED IN THE COUNTRY

*Data from MSF International Activity Report 2022

How you can help

Not everyone can treat patients in the field. But everyone can do something.

Some humanitarian crises make the headlines—others don’t. Unrestricted support from our donors allows us to mobilize quickly and efficiently to provide lifesaving medical care to the people who need it most, whether those needs are in the spotlight or not. And your donation is 100 percent tax-deductible.