Doctors without borders
Subtitle: humanitarian quests, impossible dreams of Médecins sans frontières
By: Renée C. Fox
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9781421413549; 9781421416922
Subjects: Epidemics; French Medical assistance; French Humanitarian assistance; Médecins sans frontières (Association); Prevention
Description: "This study of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) casts new light on the organization's founding principles, distinctive culture, and inner struggles to realize more fully its "without borders" transnational vision...The book begins with moving, detailed accounts from the blogs of women and men working for MSF in the field. From there, Fox chronicles the organization's early history and development, paying special attention to its struggles during the first decades of its existence to clarify and implement its principles. The core of the book is centered on her observations in the field of MSF's efforts to combat a rampant epidemic of HIV/AIDS in postapartheid South Africa and the organization's response to two challenges in postsocialist Russia: an enormous surge in homelessness on the streets of Moscow and a massive epidemic of tuberculosis in the penal colonies of Siberia. Fox's accounts of these crises exemplify MSF's struggles to provide for thousands of people in need when both the populations and the aid workers are in danger. Enriched by vivid photographs of MSF operations and by ironic, self-critical cartoons drawn by a member of the Communications Department of MSF France, Doctors Without Borders highlights the bold mission of the renowned international humanitarian organization even as it demonstrates the intrinsic dilemmas of humanitarian action." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-308) and index.
Table of contents: title: Voices from the field; title: Origins, schisms, crises; title: "Nobel or rebel"?; title: MSF Greece ostracized; title: Return of MSF Greece; title: La Mancha; title: Struggling with HIV/AIDS; title: In Khayelitsha; title: A non-western "entity" is born; title: Reaching out to the homeless and street children of Moscow, with Olga Shevchenko; title: Confronting TB in Siberian prisons, with Olga Shevchenko.