doctorswithoutborders:

MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign

The GAVI Alliance negotiates price reductions for newer vaccines and, through its donors (such as the UK, the US and Norway), pays for these vaccines to be introduced in developing countries. MSF has requested that GAVI and vaccine manufacturers extend their discounted prices to us and so far, we have been given the run-around. NGOs and humanitarian actors are partners in extending access to vaccination. Particularly in the world’s poorest countries, we help deliver health services, and in some areas, NGOs are the only actors able to access children with vaccines.

Help MSF and send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.

CLICK HERE TO SEND A TWEET.

#designwork #msfswoon

doctorswithoutborders:

 Photo: Dr. Jill Seaman has spent decades working to bring modern medicine to South Sudan.  © Marco Grob

Risk Takers | National Geographic Feature

Dr. Jill Seman has worked with MSF in the past, bringing the best treatment for Kala Azar in South Sudan. Below is a snippet of her interview with National Geographic on what it means to be a war zone doctor:

Your clinic’s been bombed and burned. But you insist you’re not a risk taker.

I’m not. I’m serious. I have a passion for health care and for Sudan. I can tell you lots of things that have happened that are scary, like a massacre in a town just north of us that killed maybe 200 people in a couple of hours. They just shot at people, at women washing their clothes. But that has nothing to do with why I’m here.

But you are there. And it is risky, no?

The thing is, it’s not that I’m taking risks. Everybody’s taking risks. Life is a risk. Everybody who lives there, they know that life could be gone in an hour. And yet they live. And they are happy. And I get to touch millions of people and hopefully help them. How could I be more lucky?

Humility. 

MSF doctor Raghu writes about his team’s concerted efforts to help young Oumere survive and reflects on the bigger issues affecting children’s survival in Chad. (via doctorswithoutborders)

Our work makes a difference, but it’s notthe answer to a broken system. The most we can do sometimes is show our patients that they do not have to fight for their lives alone. MSF is fighting with them.

Sarah Kay spoken word | If I should have a daughter

“No matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal.”

doctorswithoutborders:

MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign

“Urgent action is needed to address the skyrocketing price to vaccinate a child, which has risen by 2,700 percent over the last decade,” said Dr. Manica Balasegaram, Executive Director of MSF’s Access Campaign. “Countries where we work will lose their donor support to pay for vaccines soon, and will have to decide which killer diseases they can and can’t afford to protect their children against.”

Help MSF, send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.

CLICK HERE TO SEND A TWEET.

#designwork #msfswoon

doctorswithoutborders:

Photo: The raining season may close off vehicle access to roads, but MSF staff will find the means to reach their patients in need. DRC 2013 © MSF

MSF is one of those things I put on a pedestal for a long time. The problem with putting things on a pedestal is that the reality never lives up to your expectations. Yet each day I come into work at MSF, I find more and more reasons to see how it’s everything I imagined it to be and more. 

This is one of them.

#msfswoon

other-wordly:

pronunciation | or-en-da