Médecins Sans Frontières

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) is an independent international humanitarian medical organisation providing emergency care in conflict zones, epidemics and natural disasters. Founded in 1971 in France, it operates in more than 70 countries and employs over 65,000 people, the vast majority locally recruited, funding itself primarily through private donations to preserve operational independence from governments and political actors. MSF won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

MSF ran the largest field hospital networks during the 2014-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic and was among the first international teams deployed to the 2018-20 Kivu outbreak in eastern DRC, operating in Beni, Butembo and surrounding zones under active armed-group threat. Those two deployments Left it as one of the few organisations willing to work in high-insecurity environments where other international responders could not or would not go.

That history matters now because the US outbreak-response infrastructure that historically supplemented MSF, roughly 90 CDC specialists and $266m in USAID funding during the 2018 Equateur outbreak, no longer exists in operational form: USAID's outbreak-response unit, about 60 staff including 10 Ebola specialists, was wound down before Ituri's May 2026 Bundibugyo PHEIC. With that layer gone, MSF's willingness to operate in Djugu and Irumu territories under security constraints makes it one of few organisations able to fill the field gap.