Be There 1st MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

Every year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides emergency medical care to millions of women, children and men caught in crises in more than 60 countries around the world. MSF provides assistance when catastrophic events — such as armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, or natural disasters — overwhelm local health systems. MSF also helps people who face discrimination or neglect, are otherwise excluded from health care, and have nowhere to turn.

On any given day, close to 27,000 doctors, nurses, logisticians, water-and-sanitation experts, administrators, and other qualified professionals provide medical care in international teams made up of local MSF aid workers and their colleagues from around the world.

Armed Conflict

More than half of MSF's programs help people affected by armed conflict or internal instability.

MSF offers medical care to women, children and men who are caught in war zones and may be injured by gunshot, knife, or machete wounds, bombings, or sexual violence. We provide surgical care in 25 countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria, Chechnya, and in northern Iraq, Iran, and Jordan for Iraqi civilians.

MSF provides medical care to refugees and internally displaced people who have fled to camps and other temporary shelters. Today in places like Chad, Colombia, Somalia, and Sudan, MSF is running vaccination campaigns and water-and-sanitation projects, providing basic medical care through clinics and mobile clinics, building or rehabilitating hospitals, treating malnutrition and infectious diseases, and offering mental health support. Field teams also provide shelter and basic supplies such as blankets, plastic sheeting, or cooking pots when people have been uprooted from their homes and lack the basic necessities to help them survive.

Epidemics

MSF has a long history of responding to epidemic outbreaks of cholera, meningitis, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases that spread rapidly and can be fatal if not treated. Over the past decade, MSF has also become involved in the treatment of the devastating pandemics of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, the greatest killer of people with HIV/AIDS. MSF believes that our patients deserve the highest quality medical care possible. Through the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, MSF pushes for improved diagnostics and treatments for diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poor — including urgently needed second-line drugs for the growing numbers of patients developing resistance to first-line HIV/AIDS medicines.

Malnutrition

Malnutrition is a major factor in the deaths of five million children every year. On any one day, 20 million children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF. In Niger in 2005, MSF pioneered the use of Ready to Use Food or RUF on a massive scale, treating 63,000 severely malnourished children on an outpatient basis with cure rates of nearly 90 percent. These results provided the impetus for MSF to begin treating moderately malnourished children in Niger with RUF rather than providing them with the standard supplemental enriched blended flour. In 2007, MSF launched a pilot project using a modified RUF to prevent malnutrition from developing in children living in one of Niger's high prevalence districts.

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters can completely overwhelm a local or national health structure in a matter of minutes. MSF teams are often already present in a region when disaster strikes, and are able to quickly respond with immediate care to the women, children and men who are affected. Responding to natural disasters is the smallest area of MSF's work, representing just five percent of MSF's overall activities. This is because, more often than not, local health authorities are quickly able to garner support from international agencies and governments for natural disasters. And the needs are predominantly in the areas of reconstruction and development, which is outside of MSF's scope of expertise and operational focus.