Doctors Without Borders Canada is a top-rated, 5-star charity. It has High impact and is a Top International Impact charity. Doctors Without Borders is consistently one of Charity Intellignece's top pick charities in emergency situations and crisis response, with a great track record in speed, effectiveness and reporting. 

Founded in 1971, Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) aims to reduce suffering, save lives, and provide medical care where it is needed most. It comprises 24 national offices, which work in more than 65 countries. MSF’s charter states that it helps people regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation. Doctors Without Borders Canada (MSF Canada) is the Canadian branch of MSF, funding projects in 34 countries around the world.

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Doctors Without Borders focuses on providing medical care to victims of armed conflict, epidemics, forced migration, and disasters. It runs both immediate humanitarian relief projects and longer-term medical programs that treat diseases such as cholera, HIV/AIDS, and measles. Finally, MSF’s advocacy arm raises awareness on issues relating to human rights abuses and healthcare inequality. MSF Canada provides spending figures by country, not broken down by program area.

In 2020, MSF provided 9,904,200 outpatient consultations, facilitated 1,026,900 emergency room admissions, and assisted 306,800 births. It provided 112,000 outpatient consultations for covid-19 and admitted 15,400 covid-19 patients. It also treated 2,690,600 malaria cases and 8,300 cholera cases. In 2020, the charity’s three largest focus countries, in order of program spending, were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Yemen.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, MSF provided humanitarian and medical assistance in 16 of 26 provinces. MSF conducted 1,694,100 outpatient consultations, provided 567,800 vaccinations against measles, and treated 4,140 people for cholera. MSF helped respond to an Ebola outbreak and treated 199 Ebola patients.

MSF’s projects in South Sudan supported 7.5m people in need of humanitarian assistance due to escalating violence, covid-19, severe flooding, and food insecurity. MSF ran 16 projects in South Sudan in 2020. In response to severe flooding, MSF distributed 60,000 litres of drinking water per day where floodwater contaminated wells. MSF conducted 688,000 outpatient consultations, treated 195,300 malaria cases, and admitted 54,300 people to the hospital.

In Yemen, MSF staff run 12 hospitals and health centres to help victims of the Yemeni Civil War, which has been ongoing since September 2014. It also provides funding and support to 24 other health centres across 13 states. In January 2020, a patient in an MSF-supported hospital in Taiz City was killed. This type of violence made it difficult for MSF to help those in need. In 2020, MSF conducted 250,300 outpatient consultations, performed 26,600 medical interventions, and assisted 23,400 births.

MSF Canada is a Major 100 charity, one of Canada’s largest charities in terms of donations, with $82.2m in donations in F2021. It also received $22.5m in government funding, representing 20% of revenues. Administrative costs are 2% of revenues (less investment income) and fundraising costs are 19% of donations. This results in total overhead spending of 21%. For every dollar donated, 79 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

Doctors Without Borders Canada has funding reserves of $18.6m, which can cover 22% or less than three months of annual program costs.

According to its T3010 filing with the CRA, which was most recently available for F2020, MSF Canada uses external fundraisers. In F2020, it paid external fundraisers $7.4 to raise $28.9m, at a cost of $0.25 per dollar raised.

Charity Intelligence has sent this update to Doctors Without Borders for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on June 29, 2022 by Emily Downing.