Doctors without borders

Doctors without borders aka Medecins Sans Frontieres

This group has been active in many African countries for decades, and at times has been teh sole provider of health care, food and water. MSF has been attempting for years to increase media coverage of the situation in Africa to increase international support.MSF helps to treat and educate the public about HIV/AIDS in the sub-saharan Africa, where most deaths and cases of the disease in the world. Only 4% of Africans with the disease are receiving treatment, and the MSF is urging governments and companies to increase not only research but als development into HIV/AIDS treatments as to decrease cost and increase availability.

FIELD MISSION STRUCTURE
Before a field mission is established in a country, a MSF team goes and visits an to determine what the nature of the humanitarian emergency is, the level of safety in the area and what type of aid is needed. The main objective of most missions is medical aid, but some missions help in areas for water purification and nutrition.

FIELD MISSION TEAM
The field mission team has small quantity of coordinators that head the component of a field mission, and a head mission. The head mission ususally consisted of those with the most experience in humanitarian situations of team members and it is his/her job to deal with the media. The volunteers consists of physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other specialists.

Even the medical volunteers usually get the most media attention when the world is made aware of an MSF field mission, there are a various of non-medical volunteers who help keep the field mission working. Other non-medical staff consist of water/sanitation specialists, who have experience as engineers in the fields of water treatment and management and financial/administration experts who are also located within the field missions.



For articles about the NGO, here is a link to the NY Times.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/doctors_without_borders/index.html?inline=nyt-org