This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
When a crisis develops in the world, Doctors Without Borders isusually there to help. This organization provides emergency care tovictims of armed conflict, natural and manmade disasters, andfast-spreading diseases. The group also assists people who have noother way to receive health care. It trains local health workers,provides mental health care, and organizes nutrition and otherprograms.
Doctors Without Borders is also known by its French name,Medecins Sans Frontieres. A group of French doctors started theorganization in nineteen-seventy-one. They said they felt stronglythat race, religion and political beliefs should not prevent someonefrom receiving health care. They also said the medical needs ofindividuals were more important than national borders.
Doctors Without Borders is alsoworking to get medicines to poor people. It is involved in a newdrug research organization announced last Thursday in Geneva. Theeffort is called the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative.Research centers in Brazil, France, India, Kenya and Malaysia arealso involved.
The organizers say drug companies have forgotten about thediseases that affect millions of people in developing countries.Scientists will seek new drugs to treat diseases like sleepingsickness and leishmaniasis. Both are spread by insects. Theinitiative is to spend about two-hundred-fifty-million dollars overthe next ten years to develop new treatments for these and otherdiseases.
Medical professionals, administrators and engineers who givetheir services for free make it possible for Doctors Without Bordersto operate. It has offices in eighteen countries, but has providedaid in more than eighty nations. This is with the help of localworkers and more than two-thousand volunteers.
In nineteen-ninety-nine, Doctors Without Borders won the NobelPeace Prize. The group was recognized for its work in the conflictsin Kosovo and East Timor.
But the kind of work that this humanitarian aid group and othersdo is not without cost. Last year, the head of operations forDoctors Without Borders in the Russian republic of Dagestan waskidnapped. Russian and local officials have been working to solvethe case.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss.