Doctors Without Borders or Mdecins Sans Frontires

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Doctors Without Bordersor Médecins Sans
Frontières

• Presented by Camille Hawkins and Jillian Corey
• Religion 400, 6th Period

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How to say Medecins Sans Frontieres

• Medsan sawn fronteeyay
• Complements of Jill Coreys excellent French
  interpretation, and www.fonetiks.com

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Table of Contents

• Founding of Doctors Without Borders
• Timeline
• Impact and Results
• Current Events
• Quotes to Ponder
• In Class Activity

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What is MSF or DWB?

• MSF is the worlds largest independent medical
  humanitarian organization. Every year it sends
  more than 3,000 volunteers to some 80 different
  countries. MSF is a relief agency as well as a
  humanitarian organization, providing aid to
  populations in dire crisis and remaining neutral
  in order to aid victims on all sides.

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MSF Charter

• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins sans Frontières
  (MSF) is a private international association. The
  association is made up mainly of doctors and
  health sector workers and is also open to all
  other professions which might help in achieving
  its aims. All of its members agree to honor the
  following principles
• Médecins Sans Frontières provides assistance to
  populations in distress, to victims of natural or
  man-made disasters and to victims of armed
  conflict. They do so irrespective of race,
  religion, creed or political convictions.
• Médecins Sans Frontières observes neutrality and
  impartiality in the name of universal medical
  ethics and the right to humanitarian assistance
  and claims full and unhindered freedom in the
  exercise of its functions
• As volunteers, members understand the risks and
  dangers of the missions they carry out and make
  no claim for themselves or their assigns for any
  form of compensation other than that which the
  association might be able to afford them.
• Members undertake to respect their professional
  code of ethics and to maintain complete
  independence from all political, economic, or
  religious powers.

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Founding of MSF

• 1971, a group of french doctors found Medecins
  Sans Frontieres in the wake of the famine in
  Biafra, Nigeria
• Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as
  Doctors Without Borders, was created in 1971
  after a group of French doctors returned from
  working at a Red Cross hospital in Biafra.

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Timeline

• 1971 founded
• 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua, MSF responds to its
  first natural disaster
• 1975 Cambodians flee Khmer Rouge, MSF provides
  medical care in its first large-scale
  intervention in a refugee crisis
• 1976 War in Lebanon, MSF teams conduct surgeries
  in the organizations first major intervention in
  a war zone
• 1990 MSF/Doctors Without Borders opens in the
  U.S.
• 1991 Kurdish Refugees Flee Northern Iraq, in its
  largest emergency operation to date, MSF provides
  care in Turkey, Iran, and Jordan displaced by the
  Gulf War
• 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, MSF remains in Kigali
  throughout the genocide of over 800,000 Tutsis
  and moderate Hutus, and makes the unprecedented
  decision to call for international military
  intervention
• 1999 MSF Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for its
  pioneering humanitarian work in several
  continents

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Current Events

• 2001 The HIV/AIDS Pandemic, MSF starts providing
  antiretroviral therapy to people living with AIDS
  in seven countries
• 2002 Aid Workers Targeted, MSFs Arjan Erkel is
  abducted in Northern Caucacus, the most recent
  victim of increasing dangers faced by aid
  workers in conflict zones worldwide.
• 2003 US invades Iraq, MSF remain in Baghdad
  during the war and challenge the US government on
  its failure to provide adequate medical care to
  civilians

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Why is MSF inspiring?

• MSF is a relief agency as well as a humanitarian
  organization, providing aid to populations in
  dire crisis and remaining neutral in order to aid
  victims on all sides. It does not attempt to
  address the cause of the emergencies. Peace is
  not their business, even if it is their desire.
• MSF is a non-profit organization, run by
  volunteers willing to risk their lives to provide
  medical care to countries in need.

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Thoughts to Ponder

• It is my aspiration that health finally will be
  seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a
  human right to be fought for.
• -United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

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Thoughts to Ponder

• Of all of the forms of inequality, injustice in
  health is the most shocking and the most
  inhumane. -- Martin Luther King, Jr

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Thoughts to Ponder

• ""You get involved in this kind of organization
  because of your feeling of human solidarity,
  that's the bottom line. Do you feel any
  solidarity with an African who is in shit up to
  his eyeballs, or not? It's a very simple
  question, and I answer yes, one hundred percent.
  I'm motivated to stand side by side with these
  guys and say, 'Some of the people where I come
  from benefit from your situation, but I don't
  agree with that, and I'm here to show you that
  we're not all the same." - Martin Girard, MSF
  volunteer"

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Thoughts to Ponder

• They are not Gods though they would like to be
  they are only a human trying to fix up a human.
  - Anne Sexton, "Doctors"

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Bibliography

• www.doctorswithoutborders.org
• http//www.doctorswithoutborders.org/aboutus/chart
  er.cfm
• http//www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/video/in
  dex.cfm
• www.fonetiks.com
• http//www.worldvolunteerweb.org/typo3temp/pics/57
  536382b3.jpg