What will MSF do with your £47 000 Christmas gift?
BMJ 2015; 350 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h478 (Published 27 January 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h478
- Richard Hurley, deputy magazine editor, The BMJ, London, UK
- rhurley{at}bmj.com
“Undoubtedly humanitarian aid work has become more dangerous over the past 15-20 years,” Vickie Hawkins, executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières in the United Kingdom, told The BMJ.
“Our financial independence is a very important way that we can explain to the different armed groups that we encounter that we are not part of bigger political agendas,” she said.
The majority of MSF’s funding comes from private donations—like those from The BMJ’s readers. This independence in funding means that MSF can decide where to go based primarily on need.
At the beginning of 2014 MSF was responding to crises in South Sudan and the Central African Republic and to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. And within a few months Ebola virus disease broke out in west Africa, and the world turned to MSF to lead the global response.1
Hawkins described 2014 as a “horrific year” in which “MSF was more stretched than ever …