Radical origins of 'doctors without borders'

How about this for a job application with a difference?

“Medicine Sans Frontiere (Doctors Without Borders) UK is currently interested in receiving applications from medical staff who would be willing to work in Ebola response projects in West Africa.”

Applicants are asked if they have significant recent experience in infectious diseases and would be available for six weeks (four weeks in the field).

Despite the daunting prospects of working with highly-infectious Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and Guinea there is no shortage of doctors and nurses who are willing to potentially put their lives on the line to help those in desperate need.

The recent news that a MSF doctor from New York tested positive for Ebola, after working in Guinea, confirms the real dangers MSF volunteers and staff face when they are deployed in the field.

And as recently as 2011 two MSF workers were killed by a gunman while working with sick refugees in Mogadishu in Somalia.

But that doesn’t stop people from all over the developed world signing up.

An MSF medical volunteer sprays a child patient at a field hospital in Guinea

The radical, unconventional spirit of MSF was first formulated in France in 1968 - a time of international youth revolt and riots on the streets of Paris.

In that year a group of French doctors responded to an appeal from the French Red Cross to provide medical assistance to people caught up in the Nigerian civil war.

A team of six doctors who flew to the war-torn Nigerian province of Biafra - which was under siege from the Nigerian army - decided they needed to speak out about the events they were witnessing, including the murder and deliberate starving of civilians. They broke with conventions to openly criticise the Nigerian government and even the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behaviour.

In the next three years other doctors on aid missions began to speak out and eventually this led to the foundation of Medicine Sans Frontiere in 1971, a new and radical form of humanitarianism that would ignore political or religious boundaries and give priority to the welfare of those suffering.

In the beginning, MSF consisted of 300 volunteers including doctors, nurses and other staff, including journalists.

Their common aim was that everyone has the right to medical care regardless of gender, race, religion, creed or political affiliation and that the needs of people in need outweigh respect for national boundaries.

MSF’s first mission was to the Nicaraguan capital of Managua where an earthquake in 1972 had destroyed most of the city and killed up to 30,000 people.

Since that time MSF has continued to grow and now employs 30,000 people worldwide, including a mixture of volunteers and paid staff working on short and long term contracts.

They have sent volunteer medical teams to virtually every troublespot in the world in the last 43 years, most recently in Gaza, Pakistan, Haiti, Japan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria and – in recent months - Ebola-ridden West Africa.

But you don’t need to be a doctor or nurse to help MSF in their work.

A spokewoman for MSF explains: “It is not mainly doctors, nurses and midwives any more, although they provide a really important part of our workforce. We work in more than 60 countries around world and this demands a hug logistical support.

“So we need people who work in construction, engineers, people who work with water and sanitation, IT specialists, psychologists, finance and human resources staff and logistics staff.”

To join MSF you have to convince the organisation that you have skills which will be of use to their aid efforts. But they also have to show that they share the core humanitarian motivation to help populations in need.

“We also look for people who are flexible, willing to work in unstable environments or environments which can become unstable quite quickly,” the spokeswoman says.

There is no doubt that MSF staff are willing to run risks but these risks are carefully calculated and if a mission becomes too dangerous - as in Somalia a few years ago - MSF will not hesitate to pull out.

But MSF have a reputation of often going where no other aid organisation will go – and being the last to pull out.

“We look for people who are comfortable with a certain level of risk but staff safety is a number one priority for the organisation and we do everything to ensure our staff our safe,” a spokeswoman says.

One remarkable aspect of MSF is that it is overwhelmingly funded by private individuals. It has five million private donors around the world contributing to a total income of just over one billion Euros.

And unlike many mainstream jobs, working for MSF can be incredibly rewarding.

“When you meet a mother with a child who needs medical treatment and you can provide that care it makes you realise how important our work is,” the spokeswoman adds.

*For more information about MSF visit msf.org.uk