E-DRUG: MSF wins NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
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Fearless' MSF Wins Nobel Peace Prize
By Alister Doyle
OSLO (Reuters) - Medical relief group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
won the last Nobel Peace Prize of the century Friday and dedicated
it to ``forgotten populations'' of the world from Congo to
Afghanistan.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the prize honored MSF, also known
as Doctors Without Borders, for ``pioneering humanitarian work on
several continents'' and for its speed and fearlessness in providing
emergency aid.
MSF welcomed the award -- one of the least controversial Nobel Peace
Prizes in years. But it expressed concern that the prestige of the
prize might jeopardize an independence built up since it was
founded in 1971, mainly by French doctors.
MSF calls itself the world's largest independent medical aid agency.
It has offices in 23 nations and sends more than 2,000 white-coated
workers around the globe annually.
James Orbinski, MSF International president, said in Paris that the
award was ... ``an important high-level confirmation of the
fundamental right of ordinary people to humanitarian assistance and
protection.''
He called it ... ``an opportunity to highlight the forgotten
populations of the world who exist in extremely precarious
situations, for example in Congo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and in
many of the other 80 countries where we work.''
Praise for the prize came from politicians including French President
Jacques Chirac, who called it an ``honor for France'' and a tribute
to MSF's volunteers. The Red Cross and the U.N. refugee agency, both
former laureates, also praised MSF.
Orbinski, a Canadian, sounded a wary note that the award ... ''is in
some ways a risk for MSF because it in some ways reinforces the
institutionalization of humanitarian assistance.''
No Auschwitz
MSF co-founder Bernard Kouchner, an ex-French health minister and now
interim U.N. administrator in Kosovo, said that the presence of
groups like MSF would make massacres such as at Auschwitz,
Cambodia and Rwanda impossible in the next century.
MSF won the prize from a field of 136 candidates including Chinese
dissidents, Pope John Paul and Israeli President Ezer Weizman.
The Nobel committee said MSF ...''has adhered to the fundamental
principal that all disaster victims, whether the disaster is natural
or human in origin, have a right to professional assistance, given as
quickly and efficiently as possible.
``Each fearless and self-sacrificing helper shows each victim a human
face, stands for respect for that person's dignity, and is a source
of hope for peace and reconciliation,'' it said.
MSF played a key role in this year's biggest humanitarian crises, in
Kosovo and East Timor, where its doctors were the last medical aid
workers to leave the strife-torn regions at the height of the
fighting and among the first to return.
It was also active in helping victims of Turkey's deadly earthquake,
which killed more than 17,000 people. MSF says that less high-profile
projects include fighting sleeping sickness in Uganda or bone disease
in Tibet.
After the end of the Cold War, it broke new ground by providing
medical aid not just to Third World nations but also industrialized
states -- like Russia and Albania --with struggling health services.
First Nobel To Organization Since 1988
It was the first Nobel Peace Prize given solely to an organization
since the U.N. peacekeeping forces won the award in 1988. The last
medical group to win was International Physicians for the Prevention
of Nuclear War, in 1985.
Sejersted noted there was a long tradition of giving the prize to
humanitarian groups, stretching back to the first award in 1901 that
went to Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross.
The award is named after Sweden's Alfred Nobel, the inventor of
dynamite, and is worth 7.9 million Swedish crowns ($980,000). It will
be handed out in Oslo on December 10.
MSF traces its roots to outrage caused by images of starving children
during the Biafran war in Nigeria in 1970.
The prize was the last Nobel award this century. Prizes for
economics, physics, literature, medicine and chemistry were announced
in Stockholm earlier this month. --
Thiru Balasubramaniam
thiru@cptech.org
http://www.cptech.org/thiru
[Congratulations to MSF which is also doing a great job through its
International "Access to Medicines" campaign.
The Nobel price was actually announced during last week's "Drug
Development" conference in Paris, organised by MSF and WHO to
discuss how new drugs could be developed faster and made more
accessible to the world's poor.
Any E-drugger who can write a short report on that meeting's outcome?
WB]
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