All day long, at an MSF distribution center, humanitarian (人道主义的) supplies make their way to some of the most dangerous spots on the planet. Specially marked boxes are being packed with medicines and supplies, which are on their way to Ebola-affected Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Kathy Dedieu became a sanitation (卫生设备) and water engineer for MSF a decade ago. She has just returned from Liberia, where MSF is working to help reopen the hospitals. Her job is to make sure that clean parts of the hospitals are kept separate from areas that are polluted. She says the situation there is a complete disaster. "Even during the war, I haven't seen a health system close so fast. The hospitals are empty because the health staff just aren't there," she says. Dedieu was in Liberia during that country's civil war in 2003.
MSF was founded in 1971 by a group of doctors and journalists. "I remember being criticized in the 1980s as a ‘medical cowboy'," says Rony Brauman, who headed MSF from 1982 to 1994. "We were blamed for riding in, distributing our pills and creating unreasonable expectations." But Brauman says that's the nature of health care. "We raise expectations; we create new diseases by treating old diseases," Brauman says. "That's how it works in general. It was a kind of fight. MSF won that fight."
MSF doctor Cameron Bopp says he's worked with other humanitarian organizations but always missed the level of devotion and motivation he's found at MSF. "The main thing that's different about MSF from the point of view someone like me who goes out and works in the field is that when there's an emergency, other organizations say, ‘Whoa, this is an emergency. We're gonna be there as soon as we get funding.' And MSF has the funding," he says. "We start right away." Ninety percent of MSF's funding comes from a devoted base of five million donors. That gives it the independence to speak out and do what's really needed.