Before the Russian invasion in February 2022, the rural village of Oskil, in eastern Ukraine, was a peaceful community filled with multi-generational families who could easily access healthcare. Early in the war, Russian forces occupied the region, damaging or destroying homes, schools and healthcare facilities. Though the village has since been liberated, local health clinics …
When multiple wildfires broke out in Los Angeles in early January, International Medical Corps was very much there—staff members could clearly see the first fire, in the Pacific Palisades, from our office windows. These collective fires eventually burned a total of more than 16,000 homes, businesses and schools across 40,000 acres, displacing at least 200,000 …
Starting in July 2024, the Far North region of Cameroon began experiencing excessive rainfall that led to swelling rivers and flooding—all of which worsened ongoing security issues in the area. The floods—which have impacted more than 400,000 people—have led to food insecurity and displacement, in addition to making healthcare much harder for communities to access. …
“I vividly remember photos of malnourished Ethiopian children on the cover of National Geographic in the early 1980s,” says Dr. Bernardita Gaspar, Deputy Country Director with International Medical Corps in Sudan. “Even though I was a child, I understood what was happening, and it prompted me to tell my father that I wanted to become …
In South Sudan, where floods swallow the land and infrastructure is almost non-existent, accessing urgent medical care can be a life-or-death challenge. This became painfully clear when International Medical Corps Program Manager Bithou Gatkuoth faced a medical emergency while working in Nyal, a city in the central part of the country. On Saturday, February 1, …
It’s a warmer-than-normal January afternoon in Santa Monica, California. On the side of the road, in a parking lot temporarily serving as the re-entry point to the scorched Palisades neighborhood, members of International Medical Corps’ mental health team are approaching residents to see how they’re doing and provide resources to support their emotional recovery. Kimberly …
On December 4, 2024, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Awash Fentale woreda (district) in Ethiopia, a semi-desert plain to the east of the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. The quake, which devastated communities across seven districts and forced thousands of people to evacuate the area in search of safe shelter, was the most significant recent natural …
Over the past 40 years, International Medical Corps has responded to the world’s most pressing disasters, providing medical care and supplies, clean water and nutrition, mental health, protection and other services to families affected by conflict, disaster and disease. And true to our founding principle, we focus on training communities to become their own first …
Delivering Healthcare to Remote Areas in the DRC In 2024, as conflict intensified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, hundreds of thousands of people fled areas plagued by violence. Since January of last year, violent clashes between rebel groups and armed forces have displaced more than 400,000 people in North Kivu province, on the …
In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked Europe’s biggest refugee movement since the Second World War. Millions of Ukrainians—mostly women and children—escaped the conflict by fleeing to Poland and other European countries. “In those first few days of the war, nobody had much information about what was happening at the Polish–Ukrainian border, so I …