Shaden Alsheik

May 2015

Though Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was unprepared for the sheer magnitude of the Ebola crisis that is ravaging West Africa, MSF’s valiant response efforts have saved thousands of lives and prevented Ebola from annihilating the entire continent. While the world stood on the sidelines for the first seven months of the outbreak, MSF assumed the leading role in deploying emergency medical staff, constructing case management centers, contact tracing, training volunteers, and fostering awareness on the disease among communities throughout Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. As other non-governmental organizations retreated and the World Health Organization (WHO) downplayed the severity of Ebola, MSF quickly mobilized its international and regional teams to intervene at the epicenter of the epidemic. In the past forty-four years, MSF volunteers have stood on the frontline of countless disaster areas and war zones. MSF has dared to go perform lifesaving operations in the midst of the Syrian bloodshed and contain the spread of cholera in the chaotic aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. But never before had MSF engaged in as distressing conditions as in West Africa. Though MSF has had uniquely extensive experience in constraining smaller, rural outbreaks of Ebola in the past two decades, combatting as virulent and large-scale of an outbreak still proved immensely challenging.

Between the highly lethal nature of this particular Zaire strain of Ebola, the vast geographic dispersal of the infection, the inaction of the global community, and a severe shortage of trained medical staff, MSF’s capabilities were often over-stretched. Yet, MSF remained unflinching in the face of adversity. MSF would never consider its response effort a success, but its meticulous and innovative approach to restraining the epidemic is deserving of the highest honor of the Nobel Peace Prize. With a resilient staff that continually prioritized the wellbeing of the West African people ahead of their own, MSF emerged as the integral component to maintaining a semblance of peace and hope amidst such harrowing circumstances. The MSF response effort was imperfect, but no other entity came remotely close to executing as hasty, coordinated, and effective of an action plan. Although the world failed West Africa, the same cannot be said of MSF. MSF has once before won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, but the organization merits a second honor for spearheading a tireless and truly admirable campaign to protect humanity from one of the world’s most daunting biothreats.