Learn about our mission, our charter and principles, and who we are.
See what triggers an intervention and how supply and logistics allow our teams to respond quickly.
Discover our governance and what it means to be an association. Find a quick visual guide to our offices around the world.
Read through our annual financial and activity reports, and find out about where our funds come from and how they are spent.
Visit this section to get in touch with our offices around the world.
Médecins Sans Frontières brings medical humanitarian assistance to victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics or healthcare exclusion.
Learn about how, why, and where MSF teams respond to different diseases around the world, and the challenges we face in providing treatment.
Learn about the different contexts and situations in which MSF teams respond to provide care, including war and natural disaster settings, and how and why we adapt our activities to each.
Learn about our response and our work in depth on specific themes and events.
In more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières provides medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situations.
Our staff “own” and manage MSF, making sure that we stay true to our mission and principles, through the MSF Associations.
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.
Read stories from our staff as they carry out their work around the world.
Hear directly from the inspirational people we help as they talk about their experiences dealing with often neglected, life-threatening diseases.
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 Barcelona, ARHP documents and reflects on the operational challenges and dilemmas faced by the MSF field teams.
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.
SAMU provides strategic, clinical and implementation support to various MSF projects with medical activities related to HIV and TB. This medical unit is based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Regional logistic centre for the whole East Africa region
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.
Find important research based on our field experience on our dedicated Field Research website.
The Manson Unit is a London, UK-based team of medical specialists who provide medical and technical support, and conduct research for MSF.
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.
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 Intersectional Benchmarking Unit collects and analyses data about local labour markets in all locations where MSF employs people.
To upskill and provide training to locally-hired MSF staff in several countries, MSF has created the MSF Academy for Healthcare.
This Guide explains the terms, concepts, and rules of humanitarian law in accessible and reader-friendly alphabetical entries.
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.
A brutal attack on Kreinik town, Sudan, in April 2022, left more than 200 people dead and many more injured. The town’s hospital, supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), came under attack; two hospital staff and eight patients were killed, and the hospital pharmacy was looted. In December 2022, our teams returned to Kreinik to renovate the hospital. Dr Prince Mathew, MSF project coordinator, takes up the story.
“West Darfur in Sudan is very volatile and Kreinik has been particularly affected by violence over recent years. What looks to be very calm today can be incredibly violent tomorrow. Violence affects everyone, regardless of where they are from.
Kreinik town today is a burned-out spectre after last year’s attack. Hundreds of houses were completely burned down. Many people live in densely populated displacement camps surrounding the hospital. Public spaces and schools are now filled with hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters. The only water supply is by donkey carts.
People in both the town and rural areas face difficulties getting to markets to buy food. On market days there have been attacks on people coming into town. In the days following such violence, the situation in the area remains volatile and tense.
Many farming communities are also unable to access their farming lands located outside the area where they live, while pastoralist communities are unable to graze their cattle, which is essential for their livelihoods. Along with 300 per cent inflation in Sudan, this situation has made life incredibly difficult.
An MSF team returned to Kreinik after the attack, running mobile clinics in the villages and nomadic settlements surrounding the town. We are seeing increasing numbers of malnourished children coming to our mobile clinics, many of whom we refer to El Geneina or Kreinik hospital.
Kreinik hospital is the only specialised healthcare facility for about 480,000 people. After the attack, key services were disrupted, and the hospital was overwhelmed by the number of patients seeking healthcare. There were few doctors or nurses to provide treatment.
Community engagement is vital: if we don’t know what a community needs, we will never be able to serve them in the way that is most appropriate. They told us that the biggest needs were trauma care for accidents, gunshots and other emergencies. They also highlighted the need for women to have a safe place to deliver their babies and the need for paediatric care.
We set up our project in Kreinik hospital very fast. Our priority was the emergency room. In a place where there is a lot of violence, every life and every second counts. We then quickly scaled up and opened the maternity ward – already our first few babies have been born there. We’re on track to open the paediatric ward very soon.
Many of our staff have worked with MSF in other projects and bring a tremendous amount of devotion and experience with them. We worked together with the ministry of health’s staff. We set aside our usual roles as doctors or nurses. We cleaned up, repainted the facility and unloaded medical equipment, medical items and surgical kits.
Many of the team members are from West Darfur. Some of them lost family members in last year’s attack. For them, rebuilding the hospital was personal and involved a lot of emotions.
We also established a referral system between Kreinik and the general teaching hospital in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. We wanted to ensure that timely referrals could take place, day or night, with an MSF nurse and medical equipment on board the ambulance.
Most people in Kreinik use donkeys, horses and camels to get around. Many patients arrive on donkey-cart ambulances as motorised transport is expensive and not easily available. However, this mode of travel is slow and brings with it security considerations, especially after dark. This is why we run mobile clinics outside town – we go to the community rather than them coming here.
On 22 January, we reopened the emergency room, where injuries related to accidents, gunshot wounds or violent incidents can be treated around the clock. We have also opened a new maternity ward where babies can be born safely.
Our first baby was born on Thursday 26 January. The mother had lost a baby previously because she could not afford the hospital fees. She was very happy that the Kreinik maternity opened and is free of charge. Two weeks later, she came with her baby girl Nemat for routine immunisation and postnatal care. We’re hoping that our presence in Kreinik will contribute to an improvement in healthcare for all the people who need it the most.”
Within its first week of reopening, our teams together with the ministry of health staff in Kreinik hospital’s emergency room treated 16 patients, mainly for gunshot injuries and burns. Since 22 January, MSF midwives have helped nine women to give birth safely in the hospital’s maternity ward. Meanwhile, our teams are continuing to run mobile clinics in the nomadic settlements in Galala, Mogshasha the Kreinik area, and in Wadi Rati and Gelcheck south of El Geneina city, and to transfer patients in need of specialist medical care to El Geneina teaching hospital.
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