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About Us

How we work

See what triggers an intervention and how supply and logistics allow our teams to respond quickly.

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How we're run

Discover our governance and what it means to be an association. Find a quick visual guide to our offices around the world.

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Reports and financials

Read through our annual financial and activity reports, and find out about where our funds come from and how they are spent.

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Accountability

Read the policies, reports, and plans on how we address issues like racism and reduce our carbon footprint, ensuring our actions align with the highest ethical standards.

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What we do

Médecins Sans Frontières brings medical humanitarian assistance to victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics or healthcare exclusion.

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Featured Cholera Gaza Israel war Mediterranean migration

Where we work

In more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières provides medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situations.

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Featured Haiti Palestine Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

MSF Websites

A Global Network
Our offices around the world
Our offices around the world
Other Sites
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MSF Access

MSF Access pushes for access to, and the development of, life-saving and life-prolonging medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines for people in our programmes and beyond.

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CRASH

Based in Paris, CRASH conducts and directs studies and analysis of MSF actions. They participate in internal training sessions and assessment missions in the field.

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UREPH

Based in Geneva, UREPH (or Research Unit) aims to improve the way MSF projects are implemented in the field and to participate in critical thinking on humanitarian and medical action.

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ARHP

Based in Barcelona, ARHP documents and reflects on the operational challenges and dilemmas faced by the MSF field teams.

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MSF Analysis

Based in Brussels, MSF Analysis intends to stimulate reflection and debate on humanitarian topics organised around the themes of migration, refugees, aid access, health policy and the environment in which aid operates.

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MSF Supply

This logistical and supply centre in Brussels provides storage of and delivers medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.

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MSF Logistique

This supply and logistics centre in Bordeaux, France, provides warehousing and delivery of medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.

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Amsterdam Procurement Unit

This logistical centre in Amsterdam purchases, tests, and stores equipment including vehicles, communications material, power supplies, water-processing facilities and nutritional supplements.

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Brazilian Medical Unit

BRAMU specialises in neglected tropical diseases, such as dengue and Chagas, and other infectious diseases. This medical unit is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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MSF Medical Guidelines

Our medical guidelines are based on scientific data collected from MSF’s experiences, the World Health Organization (WHO), other renowned international medical institutions, and medical and scientific journals.

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Epicentre

Providing epidemiological expertise to underpin our operations, conducting research and training to support our goal of providing medical aid in areas where people are affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or excluded from health care.

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Evaluation Units

Evaluation Units have been established in Vienna, Stockholm, and Paris, assessing the potential and limitations of medical humanitarian action, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of our medical humanitarian work.

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LGBTQI+ Inclusion in Health Settings

MSF works with LGBTQI+ populations in many settings over the last 25-30 years. LGBTQI+ people face healthcare disparities with limited access to care and higher disease rates than the general population.

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LUXOR

The Luxembourg Operational Research (LuxOR) unit coordinates field research projects and operational research training, and provides support for documentation activities and routine data collection.

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MSF Academy for Healthcare

To upskill and provide training to locally-hired MSF staff in several countries, MSF has created the MSF Academy for Healthcare.

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Humanitarian Law

This Guide explains the terms, concepts, and rules of humanitarian law in accessible and reader-friendly alphabetical entries.

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MSF Paediatric Days

The MSF Paediatric Days is an event for paediatric field staff, policy makers and academia to exchange ideas, align efforts, inspire and share frontline research to advance urgent paediatric issues of direct concern for the humanitarian field.

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MSF Foundation

The MSF Foundation aims to create a fertile arena for logistics and medical knowledge-sharing to meet the needs of MSF and the humanitarian sector as a whole.

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DNDi

A collaborative, patients’ needs-driven, non-profit drug research and development organisation that is developing new treatments for neglected diseases, founded in 2003 by seven organisations from around the world.

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MSF Science Portal

Our digital portal dedicated to sharing the latest medical evidence from our humanitarian activities around the globe.

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Noma

Noma is a preventable and treatable neglected disease, but 90 per cent of people will die within the first two weeks of infection if they do not receive treatment.

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TIC

The TIC is aiming to change how MSF works to better meet the evolving needs of our patients.

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Telemedicine

MSF's telemedicine hub aims to overcome geographic barriers for equitable, accessible, and quality patient care.

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Sweden Innovation Unit

Launched in 2012, the MSF Sweden Innovation Unit deploys a human-centered approach for promoting a culture of innovation within MSF.

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Geo MSF

The GeoMSF platform is a dynamic one-stop-shop website for all of MSF's GIS related services and products. Access maps and applications through the catalogue, request geographical support, or produce a map on GeoMSF.

GeoMSF
Ebola disease in DRC: find out how we're responding
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8006 Results
 
Yemen, Saada city, 22 April 2019 - A man walking in front of destroyed buildings near the old city of Saada.
Yemen

Aerial bombardments in Sa'ada

Video report on life in Sa'ada, the most bombed governorate of Yemen. With almost a quarter of all recorded coalition air raids since March 2015, the MSF hospital that was bombed in 2015 and reopened in April 2018 had admitted more than 1,500 patients by the end of the year. Project Update - 20 Jun 2019
 
Bentiu, South Sudan, 2018. People wash clothes in the river in the buffer zone in Bentiu PoC (Protection of Civilians) site.
South Sudan

Life inside or outside a displacement camp

MSF patients and staff describe life in South Sudan’s Protection of Civilians sites, where relative safety comes at the expense of exposure to life-threatening diseases and undignified living conditions. Project Update - 20 Jun 2019
 
Most people in the shelters, where they wait to cross into the US, do not take to the streets due to the risk of imminent kidnapping. Migrants and refugees are exposed to risks of violence at the northern Mexican border.
Mexico

Mass arrests drive migrants underground and cut them off from medical care

MSF teams have witnessed an increase in mass arrests and raids on groups of migrants on Mexico’s southern border, with alarming consequences. Press Release - 19 Jun 2019
 
Adephine speaks in slow, hushed tones. She tugs at her mother, Elisabeth, sliding behind her as soon as the gathering of people at this remote Médecins Sans Frontières health clinic in Tanzania swells. A refugee camp can limit people’s movement, but it can do little to dash the hopes and aspirations of a 12-year-old girl from breaking through its dim and bleak confines. Adephine often lets her imagination fly outside the Nduta refugee camp, in north-western Tanzania, where she has been living since January 2017, when her mother fled violence in Burundi. In a place far away from the camp, she dreams of becoming a doctor one day. As she says this, she grows in confidence, and her eyes stare you straight in the face. In the camp, she receives lessons in English, French, basic mathematics and science, but says, with a touch of gloom, “we often get punished in the school, and I don’t like it”. It’s not only these daily chastening experiences that threaten to dampen the spirit of children like Adephine, but the grinding toil of living in a place where rationing is the norm can snuff out any lingering traces of ambition. Adephine’s father, and her two siblings, only joined the family in the camp later, when registrations had stopped. “My husband is not registered, and so he cannot receive assistance”, says Adephine’s mother, Elisabeth. “We share the food we receive among us”. A small patch of land around their modest two-room abode in the camp provides for a few green vegetables and beans. “But this is not enough”, says Elisabeth. Over 230,000 Burundians, spread across three camps in Tanzania, will remain dependent on much-needed humanitarian assistance until longer-term solutions are found. But, for now, they desperately need support. This little-spoken crisis continues to be dismally funded, revealing major gaps in the humanitarian response. Limited food, poor living conditions and weak wastewater management are a recipe for disease outbreaks. The Nduta refugee camp, where MSF is the main healthcare provider, recently witnessed a peak in diarrhoea cases, but MSF teams were able to swiftly respond and staunch the spread of the disease. Back in the health clinic, Adephine is playing with a strip of capsule. “When we are sick, we can have treatment”, says her mother, Elisabeth. But she wishes they had more variety in the food they received in the camp. Sitting together, Adephine, her younger sister, Rachel, and Elisabeth appear composed. What the future holds for them remains shrouded in uncertainty. But with those dreams that take one far away, there is always that smallest of relief to take flight, even briefly, and escape the biting reality of the camp.
Refugees, IDPs and people on the move

Refugees around the world: Stories of survival

For World Refugee Day, we take a look at the stories of survival of people forced to flee from home. There are now 70.8 million people displaced around the world. MSF teams provide care to refugees in a number of countries. Voices from the Field - 19 Jun 2019
 
Kenema hospital during the end of the first of four construction phases. Pictures are taken after the main building structures have been built. Medical Communication Advisor Gijs Van Gassen inspecting one of the modular buildings at the hospital.
Sierra Leone

New hospital to counter high maternal and child mortality rates

On 6 March 2019, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomed the first patients in its new 63-bed hospital in Hangha town, Kenema district, southeast Sierra Leone. Project Update - 14 Jun 2019
 
In March 2018, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sent an assessment team to Mosul’s old city in northern Iraq. The old city experienced intense shelling, aerial bombing and attacks with improvised explosive devices (IED) during the conflict. Much of the old city is still inaccessible due to the destruction and presence of IEDs, unexploded ordinance (UXO) and booby traps. The MSF assessment team visited two primary healthcare centres (PHCCs) and donated medical supplies such as painkillers, antibiotics, dressing materials and tablets for sterilizing water. The assessment found the PHCCs were under-resourced and struggled to provide healthcare due to the lack of medication, water and electricity. One of the doctors said: “If we don't have water or electricity, we cannot do anything…most of the cases we cannot treat. We can only treat the simple cases and the complicated cases we refer.” MSF currently runs a maternity and paediatrics hospital in west Mosul, and a post-operative and surgical unit for war-wounded patients in east Mosul. Following the assessment in the old city, MSF distributed 550 hygiene kits to families. The kits included items such as soap, toothbrushes, towels and water containers and will help families stay clean and prevent the spread of diseases.
Iraq

MSF in Iraq Annual Report 2018

Report on MSF's activities in Iraq during 2018. Report - 14 Jun 2019
 
Knocking door to door “My aunt bleeds regularly from the nose, but I am too afraid to take her to the health centre. I am afraid that she will be forced into an Ebola Treatment Center”, says a villager visited by Diallo, who knocks each day on the doors in Vukeme neighborhood in Lubero, to placate fears spread within the communities. “We need to rebuild trust with the communities, and this takes time”, explains Diallo. “We stay with these families for half an hour and inform them about Ebola and the comprehensive healthcare they can receive at Lubero-cité health center”. Since Ebola claimed some victims in this health zone early 2019, many rumours have been spread. Some sick people stopped going to professional health centers, because they were afraid of a killer disease they did not know. Diallo reassures them that many infectious diseases are treated in Lubero, but not Ebola. Ebola-suspected patients are transferred to Butembo hospital, where they can be tested and benefit from specialised care. “We stay with the families for about half an hour, but information sessions can last up to more than one hour, when we visit groups made of people who are influential in their communities. We need to make sure that the correct information is given to those who need healthcare.”
Democratic Republic of Congo

Restoring trust among communities fearful of Ebola

In the midst of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, MSF teams are finding ways to restore the trust of a community fearful of the disease and mistrustful of those responding to it. Project Update - 13 Jun 2019
 
Community Care Giver Nonhlanhla Ngema delivers anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to Busisiwe and Sibongile, both members of her Community ART Group (CAG) in Sunnydale, Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been piloting CAGs as a model of care for stable HIV+ patients in rural districts of southern Africa, where HIV prevalence is at its highest. CAG members meet once every two months to review their health and arrange for collection of their ARVs without having to sit in long queues at clinics.
HIV/AIDS

HIV project in South Africa reaches 90-90-90 target one year ahead of deadline

A year before the UNAIDS 90-90-90 HIV testing and treatment deadline, an MSF survey has found that, in working with the community, the targets have been achieved in one MSF project with a high HIV prevalence. Press Release - 12 Jun 2019
 
After an extremely busy night on the Central Mediterranean, starting late on June 9 and into the early hours of June 10, the Aquarius has 630 people on board from six different operations. The rescue of two rubber boats turned critical when one boat broke apart in the darkness, leaving over 40 people in the water. After rescuing 230 people from these boats, the Aquarius then took 400 more people on board at the request of the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (IMRCC), who had been rescued by Italian navy and coastguard ships on 9 June. Over the next days, the Aquarius was embroiled in a political stand-off at sea over the fate of the people rescued in the Mediterranean. Although the rescue and transfers of the 630 people were initiated and coordinated by IMRCC, the Italian authorities denied Aquarius authorisation to bring them ashore in the closest port of safety in Italy. Malta, which had the nearest safe port, also refused to allow the Aquarius to disembark, citing Italy’s coordination role and responsibility.  Eventually, on 11 June, the Spanish government intervened and offered to let the Aquarius disembark in Valencia, 1,300 kilometres away. Despite MSF’s concerns about the humanitarian and medical impact of the sea journey to Valencia, the Italian authorities instructed Aquarius on 12 June to transfer 524 people back to Italian ships and embark with the remaining 106 rescued on a four-day journey to Spain. On June 17, one week after they had been rescued, all 630 people were disembarked in Valencia, Spain.
Mediterranean migration

European policies continue to claim lives on the Mediterranean Sea

A year on from Italy's decision to close its ports to search and rescue in the Mediterranean, people still attempt the crossing, with thousands dying, stranded at sea or illegally returned to Libya, exposing heartless European migration policies. Press Release - 12 Jun 2019
 
A mother looks after her child hospitalized at the MSF measles treatment center in Mayi-Munene, Kamwesha (Kasai).
Democratic Republic of Congo

Massive mobilisation urgently needed to curb fast-spreading measles outbreak

The Democratic Republic of Congo is currently tackling a measles outbreak which is likely to be the country's deadliest since 2012. MSF teams are responding, but more resources are urgently needed from national and international partners to curb the spread of the contagious disease. Press Release - 11 Jun 2019
Four mothers posing in a corridor of the Hospital in Bili. All four of them are staying in the hospital with their child, that's suffering from a severe case of malaria. Since the beginning of the project in 2016, the pediatric ward already treated more than 4.000 cases of complicated/severe form of malaria.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Independent medical humanitarian assistance

We provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Our teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff - most of them hired locally. Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence and impartiality. We are a non-profit, self-governed, member-based organisation.

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