MSF

In less than 50 days, I will be participating in The Last Desert 2016 and this will be my THIRD race in this 4 Deserts series. Like the previous 2 races, I also want to take this opportunity to raise fund for charity purpose.

With great help from my friends and colleagues, I have raised over around HK$50k for different charity organizations in the past few years. This time I will raise the bar and aim to raise HK$40k for MSF.

WHY MSF?

Every year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides emergency medical care to millions of people caught in crises in more than 60 countries around the world. MSF provides assistance when catastrophic events—such as armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, or natural disasters—overwhelm local health systems. MSF also assists people who face discrimination or neglect from their local health systems or when populations are otherwise excluded from health care.

 Fact: 

 - More than 30,000 staff in the field on any given day.

- In 2014, MSF teams conducted more than eight million outpatient consultations.

- Staff delivered 194,400 babies.

- MSF surgeons carried out more than 81,000 surgical procedures.

- At the beginning of 2015, teams were active in conflict zones including Syria, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

I personally started monthly donation to MSF last year and hope to make this opportunity to encourage people around me to do the same. Remember how fortunate we are, just being disaster-free and war-free in Hong Kong. Not everyone has this fortune. 

What is 4 Deserts?

The 4 Deserts Race Series is an annual series of four 250-kilometer (155-mile) races across deserts around the globe. The races were recognized as the world's leading endurance footrace series by TIME magazine in 2009 and 2010, and by others as the "Ultimate test of human endurance". The series was founded by American Mary K Gadams who founded RacingThePlanet in 2002.

What is The Last Desert?

The race uses a polar expedition ship as its base, traveling to the different course locations on the Antarctic Peninsula and offshore islands based on the prevailing sea and weather conditions, with competitors transferred from ship to shore by zodiacs. Since 2010, this segment has been held biannually in order to minimise its environmental impact, and usually takes place around the end of November.

The unique challenges of The Last Desert (Antarctica) include having to cope with the severity of the weather conditions that can include gale force blizzards and temperatures down to −20 °C (-4 °F). Competitors also have to deal with the unpredictability of daily stage lengths and start-times, as the prevailing environmental conditions dictate where and when stages might begin.