Doctors Without Borders

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971.
Today, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. MSF provides independent, impartial assistance to those most in need. MSF reserves the right to speak out to bring attention to neglected crises, to challenge inadequacies or abuse of the aid system, and to advocate for improved medical treatments and protocols.
In 1999, MSF received the Nobel Peace Pri
MSF operates independently of any political, military, or religious agendas. Medical teams conduct evaluations on the ground to determine a population's medical needs before opening programs. The key to MSF’s ability to act independently in response to a crisis is its independent funding. Ninety percent of MSF's overall funding (and 100 percent of MSF-USA's funding) comes from private sources, not governments. In 2008, MSF had 3.7 million individual donors and private funders worldwide.
MSF is neutral. The organization does not take sides in armed conflicts, provides care on the basis of need alone, and pushes for increased independent access to victims of conflict as required under international humanitarian law.

Bearing Witness & Speaking Out

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• MSF Advocates on Behalf of Hmong Refugees in Thailand

MSF medical teams often witness violence, atrocities, and neglect in the course of their work, largely in regions that receive scant international attention. At times, MSF may speak out publicly in an effort to bring a forgotten crisis to public attention, to alert the public to abuses occurring beyond the headlines, to criticize the inadequacies of the aid system, or to challenge the diversion of humanitarian aid for political interests.
In 1985, MSF spoke out against the Ethiopian government's forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of its population; took the unprecedented step of calling for an international military response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide; condemned the Serbian massacre of civilians at Srebrenica in 1995; denounced the Russian bombardment of the Chechen capital, Grozny in 1999; and called for international attention to the crisis in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 at the United Nations Security Council.
In 2007, MSF called for international attention to the increased targeting of civilians in conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, and Somalia; advocated for the widespread adoption of new protocols for the treatment of malnutrition to include the use of ready-to-use foods; challenged pharmaceutical company Novartis's court case opposing the production of generic medicines in India, which produces an estimated 80 percent of the developing world's medicines; and spoke out against the plan of the governments of Thailand and Laos threatened to forcibly return nearly 8,000 Hmong refugees to Laos.
MSF medical teams on the ground are in constant dialogue with local authorities, warring parties, and other aid agencies in an attempt to ensure the best possible medical care for patients and their communities and to reinforce the organization's operational independence.

Quality Medical Care

Chad 2007
© Anna-Karin Moden/MSF

MSF rejects the idea that poor countries deserve third-rate medical care and strives to provide high-quality care to patients and to improve the organization's practices. Through the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines and, in recent years, in partnership with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, this work has helped lower the price of HIV/AIDS treatment and has stimulated research and development for medicines to treat malaria and neglected diseases like sleeping sickness and kala azar.

International Structure

MSF is an international movement made up of 19 associative organizations: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Each association is responsible to a Board of Directors elected by its members (MSF's current and former field staff members) during an annual general assembly. Thanks to this large network, MSF has considerable financial, human, and logistical resources.
MSF-USA was founded in 1990 in New York City to raise funds, create awareness, recruit field staff, and advocate with the United Nations and US government on humanitarian concerns.
In 2007, MSF-USA raised $152.1 million, representing 20 percent of the MSF network's private funding. It sent 200 aid workers to work overseas, liaised with a wide range of US media, organized high-level meetings with UN and US government officials, and arranged regular speaking events and activities across the US.

my heroe

In my opinion i have to say than my granfather (part of my father) is my greates heroe of my life, becouse he is brave, smart and cool wiht her family, then in the other hand, i have to say than i are more proud of him becouse he served in the u.s army, unfortunally goes to the vietnam war, thanks god he return  safey to home, he born in july 13, 1943 in guatemala city, coming for a humble family he study hard to have a best oportunity of work, in  1949 he goes to the united states,  in 1961 he goes to the the college, after gradute , unfoprtunally the troops of the u.s.a goes to help the people of vietnam, then he can still study in the university, the army recruit him, then in 1965 was the  first time than he enter in action, since 1965 to 1969 he was in many places in vietnam like khe shan and cambodia,then when the war was over he return to america and study in the university of ole miss and her goal of graduate was complete, for that reason i admired him, for been a u.s. heroe, and i hope some day been like him