Médecins Sans Frontières

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is a French-founded international humanitarian aid, nongovernmental organization that provides emergency medical assistance to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters, and exclusion from health care. Its headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland. In the United States and Canada, the organization is commonly called Doctors Without Borders.

MSF was officially founded on December 22, 1971, in Paris. The founders were a small group of French doctors and journalists who believed that all people have the right to medical care regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation, and people’s medical needs outweigh respect for national borders. According to founder Bernard Kouchner, the organization’s goal was “simple really: go where the patients are. It seems obvious, but at the time it was a revolutionary ...