Doctors Without Borders

MSF delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, and disasters.

Médecins Sans Frontières was founded in Paris in 1971 by a group of French doctors and journalists who had worked with the Red Cross during the Biafran war and wanted a medical organisation that would be free to speak publicly about what its teams saw. That combination — emergency medical care plus the willingness to bear witness — has defined the movement ever since.

Today MSF is an international movement of 25 associations, coordinated by MSF International in Geneva, running projects in more than seventy countries. Roughly ninety-seven per cent of its income comes from private donors, a deliberate structural choice that lets teams start or end an operation without waiting for institutional funding decisions and lets the movement criticise governments and donors when it believes patients are being harmed.

MSF's medical work spans war surgery, epidemic response (Ebola, cholera, measles, mpox), treatment of tuberculosis and HIV, maternal health and severe acute malnutrition. Its Access Campaign, launched with the movement's 1999 Nobel Peace Prize money, has become one of the most influential advocates worldwide for affordable generic medicines and diagnostics.