A Bright Future in Development for the Médecins Sans Frontières

Development Studies

October 17, 2013

Executive Summary
As a major in Development Studies at the University of Calgary, I am very interested in the past, present and future development of the world I live in. It has always been a passion of mine to explore the world beyond the boundaries, cultures and ideologies of my own country. I have an ambition to make a positive impact with the time I have been blessed with; specifically I aim to make that positive impact in the health sector. Boundless opportunities are becoming available every day to help sustain healthier generations, and I would like to help combat health issues and assist sustainability to grow. I have a limitless vision to work with health organizations primarily involved with saving lives and eradicating extreme poverty in areas of development. I have a great interest in the specific organization that I have chosen as this research topic. This leading independent medical aid organization goes by the name of Médecins Sans Frontières, in English this translates to Doctors Without Borders, and is commonly referred to as the MSF. This organization works to provide detrimental aid in war torn affected areas or extremely deprived regions. The MSF stands by a promise, to assist with medical aid regardless of race, religions and other social factors that tend to segregate some groups from the benefits of health care. For this reason, I am ultimately intrigued in the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders/MSF).

Project Description
Today twenty-one thousand children died because they were deprived of the medical attention they needed to act against a disease that was preventable (Shah, A 2013). Gaining access to adequate health care, health supplies and equipment is so essential to survival but is largely underprovided. Many regions of the world, still residing in poverty, are forced to experience the burden of preventable diseases and eventually preventable deaths due to these living conditions. Women are not properly cared for during child birth, children are without essential immunizations, malnutrition and diarrhea are commonalities, communities are without access to medicines, and without access to education and sanitation to inhibit the spread of dangerously fatal infections such as HIV/AIDS. With the implementation of sanitary health institutions, educated health care professionals, accessible funds for building and maintenance and an equal opportunity to access these resources we will begin to see a decrease in fatalities due to lack of health care and an increased economic society through healthy generations. The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) have addressed this issue on a few levels. With an increase in standard health care provided, we notice direct positive changes to 3 out of 8 MDG’s. Those being: to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Expectedly after increased health has sustained generations, it will be notable that the economy will have a fair chance to increase and poverty can decrease, social institutions and education can be more accessible and equality will be more attainable and we can see significant achievement in regards to all 8 of the MDG’s (OECD 2003).

The Charter Of Médecins Sans Frontières states the following declaration; “provide assistance to populations in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters and to victims of armed conflict. They do so irrespective of race, religion, creed or political convictions” (International).
That is an assurance that the international humanitarian organization, called Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders), has made and held true to since it was founded in 1971. The MSF is a non-profit and self-governed organization that stemmed from 2 ambitious doctors and now consists of elected