On November 13, 1985, one of the worst natural disasters in the country’s history occurred. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) arrived in the town of Armero to assist the affected population and has worked continuously in the country since then.
On November 13, 1985, one of the worst tragedies in Colombia’s history occurred. Due to the eruption of the Nevado del Ruíz Volcano, located in the central mountain range of the country, 30 million cubic meters of mud and stones fell at nine o’clock at night on Armero, a town that had 29,000 inhabitants at the time, and where nearly 23,000 people died as a result of the disaster.
Two days after the event, on November 15, a group of physicians and logisticians from the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) organization, founded in 1971, landed in Armero with 22 tons of medical supplies, including medications and shelter materials. Until April 1986, MSF worked hand in hand with local authorities in primary health care, logistics, and mental health. Initially, the main needs were related to rescues: people who had been trapped in tons of mud and many more who were injured or near death after the landslide.
Amid all the complications of the rescue work, MSF supported nearby hospitals such as the one in Mariquita and set up new health teams to operate in the area. “One of the most shocking things was the trapped patients, including children and old people, many of them with gangrene, trying to get out of the mud,” Marie adds.
For a year, MSF worked in Armero and nearby towns such as Lérida and Mariquita with the population affected by the eruption and with official institutions trying to rebuild health posts and hospitals and provide decent shelter conditions. When the most difficult phase of the emergency was over, MSF began to make medical needs assessments in other departments of Colombia, such as Chocó.
40 years of humanitarian work
Over the past 40 years, MSF has developed 51 projects in Colombian rural and urban areas. In addition to Armero, one of the most remembered emergencies was the earthquake in Armenia in 1999. On January 25 of that year, an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale destroyed more than 35,000 homes. In that incident, at least 1,185 people died, and more than 8,500 individuals were injured. The newspaper El Tiempo, in its January 28 edition, reported that MSF was one of the first organizations to arrive on the scene and that it had “a team of twenty people working in the area”. Likewise, it reported that MSF donated medications to the San Juan de Dios Hospital. For nine months, the organization worked in primary healthcare, surgery, water and sanitation, and mental health care.
In both the 1990s and the 2000s, MSF was characterized by accompanying the populations most affected by conflict. In fact, since 1985, MSF has implemented more than 30 projects related to violence and armed conflict in departments such as Antioquia, Chocó, Sucre, Córdoba, Tolima, Caquetá, Arauca, and Norte de Santander. Between 2003 and 2013, for example, MSF worked on projects focused on care for victims of the armed conflict in the Catatumbo subregion, in towns such as San Calixto, El Tarra, Tibú, La Gabarra, and Santa Catalina, where one of the largest outbreaks of yellow fever of that decade was treated.
It is worth noting that during this time MSF also worked with an “Other Situations of Violence” approach in cities such as Buenaventura, Cali, and Tumaco. In these projects, MSF assisted patients affected by physical, sexual, and mental violence, as well as medical needs that were not necessarily present in the context of armed conflict, but where there were health impacts due to violence in these urban centers.
The organization also worked in important health situations, such as the TB emergency in Buenaventura in 2010 or the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when it worked in Tumaco, Nariño, with local hospitals to care for hundreds of patients affected by the virus, as well as remote communities with difficulty accessing health care due to the constant fighting in the department. In recent years, MSF has been present in critical moments in the country, such as the intensification of conflict in regions like Catatumbo and Nariño, as well as attending to health needs on the Colombian-Venezuelan border and in the Darién, where it worked between 2021 and 2025 with the migrant population.
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