In 1972, Doctors without Borders conducted its first major relief effort, helping victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. Other significant missions were undertaken to care for victims of fighting in Lebanon(1976), Afghanistan(1979), and the Russian republic of Chechnya(1995). Since the 1980s, Doctors without Borders has worked to relieve famine, offered medical care to casualties of war, and dealt with the problem of refugees in such African countnes as Somalia, Ethiopia, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda.
Kouchner believes that all people have the right to medical care and humanitarian support and that nothing should prevent those in need from receiving assistance. Every year doctors, nurses, sanitation experts, administrators, and other medical and nonmedical professionals from around the world volunteer for more than 3,400 aid missions. They frequently work in the most remote and dangerous parts of the world, very often in depressing circumstanses