Civilian areas have been routinely bombed and deprived of assistance, and access to healthcare remains extremely poor in many areas. We operate in Syria where we can, but ongoing insecurity and access constraints – the Syrian government has not granted MSF authorisation to operate in the country – severely limit our activities and hamper our ability to provide humanitarian assistance that matches the scale of the needs.

Deir Hassan camp in Idlib province, northwestern Syria, is one of the many camps to which hundreds of thousands of displaced families fled, to escape the military offensive by Syrian government forces with their Russian allies between December 2019 and early March 2020. Deir Hassan camp hosts more than 164,000 people in settlements scattered over the hills and, as is the case across northwest Syria, it lacks basic services. It is now also threatened by the potential spread of COVID-19.