THE POWER OF WITNESSING AND VOLUNTEERING   
Γιατροί του Κόσμου Ελλάδας-OUR HISTORY

ORGANISATION OUR HISTORY

MÉDECINS DU MONDE HISTORY

Médecins du Monde history dates back to 1978, when a boat off the China Sea carrying 2,564 Vietnamese refugees was adrift with no clear destination. A group of doctors, intellectuals and journalists set out on a hospital ship, the Île de lumière, to provide medical assistance and witness the dire situation of the people on board. Thus, on 1 February 1980, Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) was created in France, with the aim of “going where others would not go, bearing witness to the intolerable and volunteering“. The founding team was made up of 15 volunteer doctors, believing in the power of testimony, the need for immediate medical intervention and the right to equal access to medical care, with a focus on the world’s most vulnerable populations.

In the words of one of the founding members of Médecins du Monde, the organisation’s aim was, above all, “to create a structure capable of dealing with emergencies in the shortest possible time, which is not always possible for international organisations.”

THE MISSION

Médecins du Monde first mission is to provide treatment. However, the mission extends beyond the health sector. Always based on medical expertise and with complete independence, MdM speaks openly against the obstruction of access to health. MdM stands against the violation of human rights and dignity. Firm defenders of human rights, opposing racism, xenophobia, social exclusion and the marginalisation of social groups.

These principles were the basis for the establishment of  Médecins du Monde, which later began to expand to other countries, creating an International Network of Direct Civil Society Intervention. After Médecins du Monde France, the next chapter to be created was Doctors of the World USA, in 1987, with Jonathan Mann, former head of the World Health Organization’s global AIDS program and establisher of the theory that human health and human rights are inseparable and inextricably linked. Over the next decade, further delegations were established in Spain (1989) and Greece (1990), and in other countries, strengthening the Network’s global presence.

 

Γιατροί του Κόσμου Ελλάδας-

MÉDECINS DU MONDE LOGO

Médecins du Monde first logo was presented in 1981 by founding member Jacques Bérès, depicting a dove with an olive branch in red. In the following years, the logo continued to evolve, with the dove becoming even more prominent, but still confusing with the Red Cross logo. Finally, in November 1988, Richard Rossin, co-founder of Médecins du Monde, designed the organization’s current logo.

The dove that dominates the center symbolizes world peace and medical care. The leaves on the branch, represent the five continents and the use of the colour blue represents the physical connection between the continents, namely the sky and the sea. The dove symbolically crosses the borders of countries and is depicted within a circle, which is our planet.

MÉDECINS DU MONDE GREECE

Ten years after the foundation of Médecins du Monde in France, on 15 March 1990, the founding act of Médecins du Monde Greece is signed by 72 members. In August 1991, the first MdM-Greece mission to Iraqi Kurdistan took place in the hospital of the city of Rania. It was the first time that the organization participated in a mission of this kind and scope abroad. Since then, the organization has expanded its activities on a global scale, while developing specialized interventions for vulnerable social groups and special populations, within Greece, continuing actively until today.

Γιατροί του Κόσμου Ελλάδας-
Γιατροί του Κόσμου Ελλάδας-
Γιατροί του Κόσμου Ελλάδας-
Γιατροί του Κόσμου Ελλάδας-

EXTRACT FROM THE STATUTE OF FOUNDATION

We, the undersigned Doctors, Dentists, Pharmacists and other medical personnel, once more actually declaring our devotion to the effort we have started since the day that we took our oath, to offer the best possible services to the humanity, exercising our function in the way dictated to us by our conscience and by the medical ethics without considering the pain, the fatigue or any other physical or mental hardship.

We, who every day live the unhappiness of our fellow-men, spending our lives among human beings who have our need and long for our care, sick persons, invalids, injured persons, making our own their agony, their insecurity, their pain but also their hopes.

We, who deeply worry seeing the everyday alienation of the values in the name of money, exploitation, thirst for authority and also of the wish for subordination and withdrawal, which leads to the more and more increased estrangement of one person from the other and to his abandonment to the mercy of his fate.

All we, keeping alive in our mind the Hippocrates’ Oath, are organising ourselves in order to find a way out for our concerns and offer our assistance to populations hit by earthquakes, famine, flood, massive accidents or are in war status and more generally to anyone who, for any reason, suffers physically or mentally,

Therefore, we establish an association with the name “Médecins du Monde – Greek Delegation”, based in Athens.