HEAL AFRICA

By: Todd Moffett | Photography by Nabil Elderkin | February 06, 2009 | Lifestyle News Profile

MSF medical teams often witness violence, atrocities and neglect in the course of their work, largely in regions that receive scant international attention. At times, MSF may speak out publicly in an effort to bring a forgotten crisis back into the public’s eye view, so that people may know of the abuses occurring beyond the headlines, as well as to criticize the inadequacies of a country’s aid system or to challenge the diversion of humanitarian aid for political interests.
In 1985, MSF spoke out against the Ethiopian government’s forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of its people, and took the unprecedented step of calling for an international military response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It condemned the Serbian massacre of civilians at Srebrenica in 1995; denounced the Russian bombardment of the Chechen capital of Grozny in 1999 and called for international attention to the crisis in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 before the United Nations Security Council.
In 2007, MSF demanded international attention to the increased targeting of civilians in conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and Somalia, and advocated for the widespread adoption of new protocols for the treatment of malnutrition to include the use of ready-to-use foods. MSF challenged pharmaceutical company Novartis’ court case opposing the production of generic medicines in India, which produces an estimated 80 percent of the developing world’s medicines, and spoke out against the plan of the governments of Thailand and Laos that threatened to forcibly return almost 8,000 Hmong refugees to Laos.
MSF medical teams on the ground are in constant dialogue with local authorities, warring parties and other aid agencies in an attempt to ensure the best possible medical care for patients and their communities, and to reinforce the organization’s operational independence.

On any one day, more than 27,000 committed individuals representing dozens of nationalities can be found providing assistance to people caught in crises around the world. They are doctors, nurses, logistics experts, administrators, epidemiologists, laboratory technicians, mental health professionals and others who work together in accordance with MSF’s guiding principles of humanitarian action and medical ethics.
Colleagues in 19 offices around the world, including one in New York, support MSF field staff. The vast majority of MSF’s aid workers are from the communities where the crises are occurring, with 10 percent of teams made up of international staff, including more than 200 aid workers from the United States in 2007.

OXFAM
Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working with more than 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.
Though Oxfam’s initial concern was the provision of food to relieve famine, over the years, Oxfam has developed strategies to combat the causes of famine. In addition to food and medicine, Oxfam also provides tools to enable people to become self-supporting as well as opening markets of international trade where crafts and produce from poorer regions of the world can be sold at a fair price to benefit the producer.
Oxfam’s program has three main points of focus: work development work, which tries to lift communities out of poverty with long-term, sustainable solutions based on their needs; humanitarian work, which includes assisting those immediately affected by conflict and natural disasters, especially in the area of water and sanitation; and lobbying, advocacy and popular campaigning work that tries to affect policy decisions on the causes of conflict at local, national and international levels.
Oxfam works on trade justice, fair trade, education, debt and aid, livelihoods, health, HIV/AIDS, gender equality, conflict (campaigning for an international arms trade treaty) and natural disasters, democracy, human rights, and climate change
http://www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com

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