Relationship between WHO and MSF

[OrangeCaramel]

I don't really know which forum to post this in, so I'm posting it here. Sorry if I'm completely off.
What is the relationship between World Health Organization (a UN council) and Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders, an NGO)?
Do they communicate? Does the WHO influence the MSF, or is it the other way around? Are they friendly with each other?

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[mzarrowsmith]

If you have access to Netflix, I recommend watching "Living in Emergency." It's about MSF and gives some background about the organization. There's also a book about MSF called "Hope in Hell" that describes its philosophy and probably touches on the relationship with the internationals organizations.

WHO is more interested in longer term health disparities and outcomes while MSF is more focused on disaster response. I would imagine MSF leadership knows and talks to people at the UN, but they have different missions, so probably not a lot of coordination or influence. MSF people tend to be fairly cowboyish and do not have a very high opinion of the bureaucratic, slow-moving UN-type aid organizations.

 

[Amba]

If you have access to Netflix, I recommend watching "Living in Emergency." It's about MSF and gives some background about the organization. There's also a book about MSF called "Hope in Hell" that describes its philosophy and probably touches on the relationship with the internationals organizations.

WHO is more interested in longer term health disparities and outcomes while MSF is more focused on disaster response. I would imagine MSF leadership knows and talks to people at the UN, but they have different missions, so probably not a lot of coordination or influence. MSF people tend to be fairly cowboyish and do not have a very high opinion of the bureaucratic, slow-moving UN-type aid organizations.

Pretty much. I assume they communicate and collaborate some, but their purpose/mission are so different that there probably isn't a drastic amount of crossover.

 

[wholeheartedly]

Yeah, I've done a lot of reading on both. They communicate and collaborate in various ways depending on the situation. Sometimes WHO finds out about situations then contacts groups like MSF who have certain known & needed skill sets to come in, like with the Ebola outbreaks in Uganda, MSF has a good program for setting up containment and lots of experience with that, and the CDC and a lab in South Africa with diagnostics.

 

[wholeheartedly]

Also, other good resources are the movie (also on netflix I believe) called "Triage: James Orbinski's humanitarian dilemma" and the book 'Six Months in Sudan' avail electronically on Kindle.

 

[OrangeCaramel]

I have read Hope in Hell and it briefly mentions WHO, probably for the reasons you stated (anti-bureaucratic...I am glad you mentioned this or else I would have though something else). I have a Netflix account, so thank you for all the recommendations! Might watch one tonight.
Anybody who may have been in model UN might know more. I am in it, but unfortunately have had the bad luck to be switched out of the WHO multiple times 😡
@wholeheartedly so are you saying that if there was a massive man-made disaster (let's say bombing in Northern Africa that destroys the infrastructure), the WHO may commission MSF to go to the area that they may not have had access to?

 

[mmmcdowe]

Moving to hSDN.