In more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières provides medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situations.
We set up the MSF Access Campaign in 1999 to push for access to, and the development of, life-saving and life-prolonging medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines for people in our programmes and beyond.
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.
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.
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.
This logistical and supply centre in Brussels provides storage of and delivers medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.
This supply and logistics centre in Bordeaux, France, provides warehousing and delivery of medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.
This logistical centre in Amsterdam purchases, tests, and stores equipment including vehicles, communications material, power supplies, water-processing facilities and nutritional supplements.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Luxembourg Operational Research (LuxOR) unit coordinates field research projects and operational research training, and provides support for documentation activities and routine data collection.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In addition to existing problems confronting Afghanistan, the country is now also facing a cholera epidemic.
MSF has opened a cholera treatment centre (CTC) in the health centre of Bala Morghab, in the Northwest of the country). Additional reports about cholera have come in from the nearby district of Gormach.
A combined team of Afghan health authorities workers and an MSF Afghan team member have set out to establish the CTC and assess the situation in the villages where incidences of cholera have been reported. The team is carrying oral rehydration salts (ORS) and chlorination material to treat the drinking water.
Since the distances between the villages are big, stocks of ORS will be left in the villages. The 'mullahs' and/or local health workers will be instructed how to administer the fluid.
Three medical expats from an MSF emergency team will be dispatched to reinforce the team in Afghanistan.
No cases of cholera have been reported from Kandahar or Herat. Expectations are that the epidemic will not deteriorate into a massive crisis, but will slowly move from region to region since the villages are so spread out.
In response to the looming food crisis in Afghanistan, MSF has started vaccinating against measles in some of the provinces where it already works and where the vaccination rate is low. At the same time the children will be measured according to the MUAC-system (middle upper arm circumference) to monitor developments concerning the food situation.
Through four health centres in Bala Morghab, Kandahar and Herat, MSF will be distributing weekly supplementary food rations to those children in need of supplementary feeding, with enough food to feed the whole family. More effort will be put into scanning the developments, with special attention paid to monitoring the information from the health centres, the prices of food and population movements.
