msf.org

MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders) is an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation. It provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Its work is guided by medical ethics and the principles of impartiality, independence, and neutrality. Teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff, and most of them are hired locally.

The three guiding principles

MSF states that its actions are guided by medical ethics and three principles:

• Impartiality — assistance is based on need, not on nationality, race, religion, or political affiliation.
• Independence — the organisation describes itself as independent, meaning its decisions are not tied to any political, economic, or religious power.
• Neutrality — MSF does not take sides in armed conflicts or political disputes, so it can reach people on all sides.

These principles are what allow MSF to work in conflict zones, epidemic outbreaks, and disaster settings where access is otherwise difficult.

How the teams are structured

MSF's workforce is large and mixed in skills:

A key structural feature is local hiring: most staff are recruited in the country where the project operates. This shapes how MSF works — projects are staffed largely by people from the affected communities, supported by international staff who rotate in.

What this means in practice

The combination of principles and staffing has practical consequences:

• Access depends on perceived neutrality. If MSF is seen as taking sides, its teams can be blocked from reaching patients.
• Local hiring affects continuity. Because most staff are local, projects keep running even when international staff rotate out.
• Medical ethics come first. MSF frames its decisions around patient care rather than political or institutional interests.

Scale of operations

MSF reports activity in more than 70 countries. Its International Activity Report 2025 lists figures including:

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

These numbers illustrate the scale of the organisation, but the structure behind them is consistent: independent teams, guided by medical ethics, working where people are affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare.

msf.org publishes four main types of editorial content — press releases, opinion pieces, project updates, and photo stories — plus an annual International Activity Report. These cover MSF's medical humanitarian work in more than 70 countries, organised by crisis and by region, so you can follow a specific emergency or a specific country over time. The site is the official English-language outlet of Médecins Sans Frontières, an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation.

The content types you will find

The homepage excerpt shows all of these running side by side. Recent examples include a photo story on palliative care for women with cervical cancer in south Malawi, an opinion piece titled "Why we could not stop cholera in Sudan," a project update on Ebola in North Kivu, DRC, and a press release on Gaza and Israel.

What topics the updates cover

MSF's stated scope is medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. In practice, the news and updates section reflects that range:

• Conflict — for example, the war in Gaza and Israel, and conflict in Sudan
• Disease outbreaks — Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cholera in Sudan, malaria
• Displacement and access to care — people seeking safety in Greece
• Specific medical programmes — such as palliative care, described in the Malawi photo story
• Country situations — explainer-style pieces such as "Five things to know about the situation in the south of Yemen today"

The annual report and headline figures

The International Activity Report is the site's yearly reference document. The 2025 edition is linked from the About Us section and is the place to go for aggregate numbers rather than single-crisis reporting. Figures published alongside it include:

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

Use the report when you need scale and year-on-year context; use the news and updates stream when you need what is happening now.

How the content is organised

Two navigation paths matter most:

1. By country — the "Where we work" section lists more than 70 countries, with both a list view and a map view. This is the fastest route to everything published about one country.
2. By theme or latest — the latest items are grouped on the homepage and in the updates stream, mixing press releases, opinion, project updates, and photo stories.

One caveat on the map: MSF states that place names and boundaries on it do not reflect any position on legal status, and that it uses the Gall-Peters equal-area projection.

How to use the site for tracking a crisis

If you want to follow one situation rather than browse:

1. Open "Where we work" and select the country.
2. Read the most recent project update first — it usually carries the current operational picture.
3. Check the press release stream for MSF's formal positions on the same crisis.
4. Use the opinion pieces for analysis of why the response did or did not work.
5. Return to the International Activity Report for the annual totals once the year closes.

This sequence separates what is happening now from what MSF is publicly demanding and from its own retrospective assessment — three different things that the site keeps in separate formats.

MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) provides medical humanitarian assistance in more than 70 countries, and msf.org lets you browse that work in two ways: a country list and a map. Use the country list when you already know which country you want; use the map when you want a geographic overview first. Both lead to the same underlying project pages.

How MSF describes its scope of work

MSF is an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation. Its stated purpose is to provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, plus logistics and administrative staff — most of them hired locally. The organisation says its actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality.

The scale is large. MSF's International Activity Report 2025 cites figures including 17.1 million outpatient consultations, 3.6 million malaria cases treated, and 1.8 million patients admitted, across 72 countries.

Finding projects by country on msf.org

The site's "Where we work" section is the entry point. It states that MSF provides medical humanitarian assistance in more than 70 countries, and offers two browsing modes:

• View All Countries List — a text list of countries where MSF operates. Best when you have a specific country in mind or want to scan the full set.
• View Map — a geographic view. Best when you want to see distribution across regions.

From either view, you move into individual country or project pages, which describe the specific work being done there. The site also groups content by programme type, so you can browse by the kind of work rather than only by location.

A note on the map

The map carries an explicit disclaimer: the place names and boundaries shown do not reflect any position by MSF on their legal status. It also uses the Gall-Peters equal-area map projection — a choice that represents land area proportionally rather than preserving the shapes familiar from standard web maps. If you are citing the map, keep that framing in mind.

What you'll find on a country or project page

Country and project pages carry current activity, often as dated updates. Examples visible on the site include:

These appear as project updates, press releases, opinion pieces and photo stories. Dates and headlines on the site change as new material is published, so treat the table as a snapshot of what the section looks like rather than a fixed index.

Practical steps

1. Go to the "Where we work" section of msf.org.
2. Choose View All Countries List if you know the country, or View Map if you want an overview.
3. Select a country to reach its project page.
4. On the project page, look for dated updates, press releases and photo stories for the most recent activity.

If you need the aggregate picture rather than a single country, the International Activity Report is the document MSF points to for organisation-wide figures.

Common sticking points

• The map is not a political statement. The disclaimer about place names and boundaries is part of the map itself, not a footnote — read it before quoting the map in anything formal.
• "More than 70 countries" and "72 countries" are different statements. The former describes the general scope; the latter is tied to the International Activity Report 2025 figures. Don't merge them.
• Country pages are not static. Content is dated and updated, so a page you read today may lead with a different story next month.

MSF, or Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), is an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation. It provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. The msf.org website is the organisation's main public platform, covering where it works, what programmes it runs, and current news and reports from its field operations.

What MSF does

MSF describes itself as an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation. Its stated purpose is to provide medical assistance to people affected by:

• Conflict
• Epidemics
• Disasters
• Exclusion from healthcare

The organisation says its actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of impartiality, independence, and neutrality. These principles are central to how MSF presents itself and decides where and how to intervene.

How the organisation is structured

MSF's teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, plus logistic and administrative staff. According to the organisation, most of these staff are hired locally — meaning the majority of people delivering MSF's work come from the communities and regions where programmes operate, rather than being deployed only from outside.

Scale of operations

The msf.org homepage highlights several figures from its International Activity Report 2025:

These numbers give a sense of the volume of medical activity MSF reports across its programmes.

What the msf.org website covers

The site functions as both an organisational overview and a live record of MSF's work. Key sections include:

• About Us — explains MSF's identity, principles, and mandate as a medical humanitarian organisation.
• Where we work — states that MSF provides medical humanitarian assistance in more than 70 countries, with options to view an all-countries list or a map. The site notes that place names and boundaries on its map do not reflect any position by MSF on legal status, and that the map uses the Gall-Peters equal-area projection.
• Our Programmes — covers the types of medical and humanitarian programmes MSF runs.
• Latest news and project updates — reports on current situations, such as palliative care for women with cervical cancer in Malawi, people seeking safety in Greece, the situation in southern Yemen, conflict in Sudan, Ebola outbreaks in the DRC, and the Gaza-Israel war.
• Reports — including the International Activity Report, which summarises activity across countries.

How to use the site

If you want to understand what MSF is and whether it matches your interest — whether for research, donation decisions, or general awareness — the most useful entry points are:

1. About Us for the organisation's mandate and principles.
2. Where we work for the geographic scope and country-level presence.
3. Latest and Project Update items for current, specific examples of its work.
4. International Activity Report for aggregate figures on consultations, cases treated, and admissions.

The site presents MSF's own account of its mission, principles, and activities. For anyone assessing the organisation, these sections provide the primary claims and the scale of operations it reports.

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.