New campaign from Doctors Without Borders urges South Africans to connect

Hatched by creative agency TBWA\Hunt-Lascaris, #ToughDecisions creates a dynamic tension between the intense decisions MSF medics must make daily, working on the frontlines of conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central African Republic and the current Ebola outbreak health crisis in West Africa, and the mundane choices of everyday life to spur South Africans into action.

On Sunday 21 September MSF supporter, TV host and businessman, Maponyane teams up inspirational singer and Amajika arts project pioneer, Nokwe and Afro-pop sensation, Habida, to launch #ToughDecisions at Johannesburg's premier jazz club, The Orbit. MSF fieldworkers will be on hand to give behind-the-scenes insights and share their experiences with guests.

"Despite their generous spirit, few South Africans are aware or involved in supporting humanitarian work internationally. By launching #ToughDecisions we hope to change this by pulling them into the reality of our fieldworkers and medics with provocative TV adverts. We put ordinary South African viewers right in the middle emergency rooms in Pakistan and Central African Republic where life and death decisions have to be made in a split second," says Daniel Berman, General Director of MSF South Africa.

TVCs, social media campaign

The TV adverts go live online and on SABC2, SABC3 and DStv from 22 September onward and the #100ToughDecisions social media campaign will run on Twitter and Facebook until 29 December - just before South Africans make their resolutions for 2015. With this campaign, MSF seeks to recruit 10,000 new South African donors.

"We recognise that life isn't easy with so many consumer and lifestyle choices - but not all decisions are tough decisions. #ToughDecisions calls on South Africans to simply decide to donate to help maintain the organisation's life-saving work in 65 countries," says Dr Mohammed Dalwai, MSF fieldworker and MSF Southern Africa board member.

Supporting ordinary people

Dr Stefan Kruger - another South African who has worked with MSF in Afghanistan, South Sudan - says his choice to join MSF to fight the deadly Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone was no tough decision. "If MSF weren't here in Kailahun, there'd be no one else. For me that's reason enough to be here."

"It's the support of ordinary people donating a little every month that enables our medics to keep working in some of the most volatile and harshest places where people are caught in crises," explains Dalwai. He is no stranger to tough decisions having worked in MSF emergency rooms in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Sierra Leone and Haiti. He piloted the adoption of the South African Triage Score - a protocol developed in local emergency rooms - inside MSF hospitals in order to help medics working in trauma units make better decisions about patient prioritisation for life-saving treatment.

Event details

The event at the Orbit Jazz Club in Braamfontein will be held on Sunday 21 September 2014 from 4-7.30pm. Tickets are R100, with the proceeds going toward supporting MSF's work. For more information, go to www.msf.org.za.