Not everyone knows about “Doctors Without Borders” (MSF, which stands for medecins sans frontieres, in French), a charity and non-governmental organization that is really into the social world.
It was founded in 1971 in Paris by a group of 300 volunteers and doctors who started helping the victims of the earthquake in Nicaragua, following the appeal of two journalists of the medical journal Tonus, Raymond Borel and Philippe Bernier, but then continued their work in other needy countries. Now the charity has improved a lot: it has about 65,000 employees who work in more than 70 countries of Africa, Asia, Pacific, Middle East, Europe and the Americas and it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 as a recognition of the work done.
Its aims are to provide vaccinations, primary care, mental health counseling, nutrition and clean water to those who need it, raise awareness of medical emergencies and support communities stricken by illness and infections or natural disasters and wars that force them to flee their homes without hope of a better future.
MSF takes the field in assistance of all the people and doesn’t take sides, expressing its impartiality, neutrality and independence from economic, political or religious purposes. Thanks to the enormous help of Doctors Without Borders, a lot of children that before couldn’t see the light at the end of this tunnel of rubble, now can believe in change.
Chiara Pira