Médecins du monde (MdM; French pronunciation: [medsɛ̃ dy mɔ̃d]), or Doctors of the World, is an international humanitarian organization which seeks to provide emergency and long-term medical care to the world’s most vulnerable people. It also advocates for an end to health inequities.

It was founded in 1980 by a group of 15 French physicians, including Bernard Kouchner and Alina Margolis-Edelman (a native of Poland). MdM is active in over 80 countries with approximately 400 programs in both the developed and developing world.

MdM was formally established on 1 February 1980. Its goals were “to go where others will not, to testify to the intolerable, and to volunteer”.

The origins of MdM lay with Médecins Sans Frontières. During the Vietnam War, the future founding members of MdM were approached with the idea of aiding Vietnamese refugees fleeing by ship on the South China Sea.The majority of the Médecins Sans Frontières were against aiding the Vietnamese refugees. However, Kouchner, along with volunteer doctors, journalists, and others organized a hospital boat, L’Île de lumière (“The Island of Light”), to provide medical care and to report the refugees’ suffering.

MdM was founded by Bernard Kouchner and 14 others doctors split from the group he previously founded, Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders). It has been reported Kouchner felt that MSF was giving up its founding principle of témoignage (“witnessing”), which refers to aid workers making the atrocities they observe known to the public.

Kouchner was president of MdM from 1980 to 1982. In 1989, the foundation of MdM Spain paved the way for the creation of the MdM international network. In 2015, the MdM global network consisted of fifteen associations; France (founded 1980), Spain (founded 1989), Greece (founded 1990), Italy and Switzerland (both founded 1993), Sweden (founded 1994), Cyprus (founded 1995 by Elena Theoharous[7]), Argentina (founded 1998), Belgium, Canada and Portugal (all founded 1999), as well as in Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States.

In December 2013, documents released by National Security Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden revealed that British and American intelligence agencies had been carrying on secret surveillance of several humanitarian organizations including Médecins du Monde. Leigh Daynes, Executive Director of Doctors of the World UK said that he was “bewildered by these extraordinary allegations of secret surveillance. Our doctors, nurses and midwives are not a threat to national security. There is absolutely no reason for our operations to be secretly monitored.” Other humanitarian organizations targeted include the United Nations Development Programme, the children’s charity UNICEF, and the head of the Economic Community of West African States.