Doctors without Borders: Why They are Needed and What You Can Do Outline

I. Attention Grabber

a. Exposing the Dangers

b. The Doctors without Borders group protested the establishment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership because it saw the TPP would cut off supplies desperately needed for its work

c. The U.S. then attacked a Doctors without Borders hospital in Afghanistan killing dozens and destroying the work of the group for 2 years

i. 42 people died

ii. Including staff, doctors, patients and volunteers

d. This contrast between a nation intent on destroying with bombs and a small group intent on healing with health care and medicine shows that people need to choose sides and support one or the other.

II. Establishing the Need

a. Because of all the conflicts, wars and diseases raging around the world, there is a need for humanitarian service.

b. Doctors without Borders has been satisfying that need since the 1970s

c. However, Doctors without Borders cannot do it alone.

d. If they speak out against the tyranny of the West, they are attacked.

e. They need your help.

III. Satisfying the Need

a. The group cannot continue to satisfy the need if it is targeted politically and blown up literally by bombs and bullets

b. Ordinary people, therefore, have to do more to get involved.

c. The government is accountable to you all.

d. If you protest, they hear you.

IV. Visualizing the Future

a. If you do nothing, this type of madness will continue.

b. It is a choice of deciding which version of humanity you want to live with:

i. The version where violence is the only solution, or

ii. The version where care, commitment and devotion can help to turn lives around and bring peace.

c. The future does not have to be one of war.

d. It can be one of peace—but it depends on us to make that happen.

V. Actualization

a. To actualize this information, you have to raise your voice and be willing to stand up if you get knocked down.

b. Just like Doctors without Borders has done.

c. Its hospital was blown up in Kunduz in 2015

d. Since 2017 it is back up and running again.

e. The hospital is smaller now and less powerful—but it is still a sign of what people can do when they work together for the good:

i. They create things, groups, organizations, structures.

ii. They bring peace and health and life

f. You can do the same by joining or supporting Doctors without Borders

Speech

Good afternoon, my fellow students. Back in 2015 when the U.S. was trying to get the Trans-Pacific...

This Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization founded in 1971 (Suen) to address the health care needs of people primarily stuck in conflict zones called the TPP an “imminent threat to global health” (Bernish). As the Obama Administration sought to gain support from the trade agreement that would allow Big Pharma to internationally control the prices of drugs (and thereby control the extent to which health care could be provided to indigent populations), the leaders of Doctors without Borders became more and more vocal, conducting interviews, publishing information on their own and even writing directly to the U.S. President himself (Bernish). As Gordon notes, the group “accused the US government of inserting provisions into the TPP that would interfere with the low-cost delivery of malaria and hiv/aids medicines to developing nations” (Gordon 20).
And then on October 3rd, 2015, U.S. forces bombed the Kunduz region in Afghanistan and destroyed the trauma hospital operated by Doctors without Borders killing 42 people, including patients, volunteers and doctors who had dedicated their lives to helping the victims of the international crises ongoing in the Middle East. It was as though the hospital were directly targeted by U.S. forces because there had been no fighting in the immediate vicinity. The hospital was not a hotbed of terror. It had 92 beds and it “was the only facility treating major trauma injuries in all of northeastern Afghanistan, serving thousands of people. Since opening the hospital in 2011, more than 15,000 surgeries were conducted and more than 68,000 emergency patients were treated” (MSFa). Yet on October 3rd, patients were “burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs, and others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building” (MSFa). It could only be explained as blowback for speaking out against the health care cartel that wanted to rule the world through the control of the flow of drugs everywhere. Doctors without Borders was targeted directly—“starting at 2:08am on Saturday 3 October, a United States AC-130 gunship fired 211 shells on the main hospital building where patients were sleeping in their beds or being operated on in the operating theatre. At least 42 people were killed, including 24 patients, 14 staff and 4 caretakers. Thirty-seven people were injured” (MSFb). The U.S. claimed, first, that it had hit the hospital by accident—then, after this seemed unlikely, they changed their story and claimed the hospital had been supporting the Taliban. Yet one of the reasons the Doctors without Borders organization has been so successful is that it has…