What kinds of medical programmes and activities does MSF run?

MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders) runs medical humanitarian programmes for people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Its work spans direct patient care, outbreak response, and care for people cut off from health systems — delivered by teams that are mostly hired locally and guided by medical ethics and the principles of impartiality, independence, and neutrality. If you want to understand the type of work MSF does rather than a single country's project list, the categories below are the practical frame.

The four situations MSF organises its work around

MSF describes its assistance as going to people affected by:

• Conflict — medical care and related support in war-affected areas.
• Epidemics — outbreak detection and response.
• Disasters — emergency medical assistance after natural or other disasters.
• Exclusion from healthcare — people who cannot reach or are not reached by existing health services.

These are not separate departments so much as the conditions that trigger a programme. A single project can sit in more than one category at once.

Examples of actual programme types

The categories above become concrete in specific activities. From MSF's own reporting:

This list is illustrative, not exhaustive — it shows the range from long-term chronic care (palliative home visits) to fast-moving emergency response (cholera, Ebola).

How MSF describes the scale of its work

MSF publishes activity figures that give a sense of volume rather than just presence. Its International Activity Report 2025 reports:

• 17.1 million outpatient consultations
• 3.6 million malaria cases treated
• 1.8 million patients admitted
• Work in 72 countries

These numbers are useful for judging the type of activity: outpatient consultations and malaria treatment point to high-volume primary care, while admissions indicate inpatient capacity.

Who delivers the work

MSF's teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals plus logistic and administrative staff — most of them hired locally. That local hiring model is central to how programmes are staffed and sustained, and it is a relevant detail if you are trying to understand how a project operates on the ground rather than just what it does.

How to follow specific programmes and updates

MSF publishes project updates and news organised by region and by issue. Recent examples from the site include:

• Malawi — palliative care for women with cervical cancer
• Greece — people seeking safety trapped in uncertainty
• Yemen — five things to know about the situation in the south
• Gaza–Israel war — statements and press releases
• Sudan — why cholera could not be stopped
• DRC — Ebola outbreak spreading in North Kivu

If you want to track a particular programme type, the practical route is to browse by country or by topic, since the same issue (for example, cholera) appears under different countries at different times.

Where MSF works, in one line

MSF provides medical humanitarian assistance in more than 70 countries, with the activity report citing 72. For a full country list or map, the site offers both a list view and a map view; note that MSF states the place names and boundaries on its map do not reflect any position on legal status, and that the map uses the Gall-Peters equal-area projection.