The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised its ``pioneering humanitarian work on several continents''.

Founded in 1971, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) calls itself the world's first non-military, non-governmental organisation to specialise in emergency medical assistance.

It has frequently been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The award was probably a relief for Beijing, which had feared that Chinese dissidents might win the last Nobel award of the 20th century.

The prize, worth 7.9 million Swedish crowns (980,000 US dollars) is to be handed over in Oslo on December 10. Friday's prize was the last Nobel award this century -- prizes for economics, physics, literature, medicine and chemistry were announced in Stockholm earlier this month.

Now a fixed part of the relief scene, private aid groups were all but unknown when MSF was founded in 1971 by doctors caring forvictims of the Biafran civil war.

The strict limits on established groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) prompted activist doctors, including the current United Nations coordinator for Kosovo Bernard Kouchner, to launch a new movement that combines relief aid and human rights advocacy.

In the years that followed, MSF spread around the world. It now has 23 offices around the world and sends more than 2,000 volunteers to some 80 countries annually.

It played a key role in this year's biggest humanitarian crises, in Kosovo and East Timor, where its doctors were the last medical aid workers to leave the strife-torn regions at the height of the fighting and among the first to return.

Although often known simply as `the French doctors,' MSF now counts more than 45 nationalities in its ranks. Its budget amounts to more than 250 million dollars, raised in almost equal parts from private contributions and institutional donors.

Many of its founders chafed under their officialneutrality as French Red Cross doctors in Biafra, where they were barred from speaking out about what they saw as genocide by Nigerian forces against the separatists.

First seen as ``medical hippies,'' the group made a name for itself by the late 1970s as a boom in civil wars and refugee camps in developing countries boosted the need for quick and effective medical aid around the world.

Suddenly, MSF was helping embattled Shi'ites in Lebanon, Angolan refugees in Zaire, Somalis in Djibouti and Saharan refugees in Algeria and Eritrea. In Thailand, it cared for Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees.

Indo-China led to a split in the group, with MSF leaders criticising Kouchner for chartering a ship to rescue Vietnamese boat people without consulting them. Kouchner left to found the rival group Medecins Du Monde (Doctors of the World).