Objective and practice

Medics without Vacation (MWV) regroups 600 medics, nurses and paramedics with one common goal: to help improve health care in Africa. Medics without Vacation does not provide emergency aid, but works towards a sustainable solution: expertise transfer. Medics and nurses dedicate their holidays to assist and train their African colleagues perform an operation or visit patients.

All medics and nurses participating in MWV are volunteers and are specialists within their field. In the course of a mission, they show their African colleagues how to make a diagnosis and how to improve certain medical operations, sometimes performing the operations together. MWV's medics do more than just operate and leave; through short yet intensive training, local expertise and knowledge increases so that local doctors can pursue their work autonomously after they have left.

On the principle that 'Knowledge Heals' they succeed in enhancing health care in a sustainable way.

MWV is active in 7 African countries, classified as 'least developed countries' by the United Nations: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, D.R.Congo, Cameroun, Rwanda and Tanzania. MWV is present in over 50 hospitals on a long-term basis.