DOCTORS TAKE IN NEW HORIZONS
swissinfo, Gaby Ochsenbein

Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Switzerland
Dec 4 2006

The Swiss section of Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which provides
medical assistance to victims of natural disasters and war, is
celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Representatives of this non:governmental organisation are active in 20
countries, helping people in war:torn Darfur, treating Aids patients
in Mozambique and fighting tuberculosis in Kyrgyzstan, among others.

Antoine Chaix is just one of many medical volunteers who make up MSF.

He is a member of the Swiss section’s committee and has worked in
the field on a number of occasions for the organisation.

His first mission lasted seven months and took him in 1997 to
Azerbaijan’s Nagorny Karabakh region to help fight tuberculosis.

"I had never come across this disease despite working for a number of
years in Switzerland," he said. "To find out more, I visited similar
projects in Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia, where the situation was
tense. It was a whole new world for me."

Even though he was a young doctor, his job was to convince more
experienced colleagues to apply World Health Organization guidelines,
anything but a simple task and requiring real diplomatic skills.

For security reasons, the MSF staff were not allowed to leave their
residence alone. There weren’t any restaurants, in fact no distractions
whatsoever.

"Team spirit is extremely important," Chaix told swissinfo. "You
spend all your time working and living with the same people."

Experience Until 2002, he worked in Kazakhstan, Mozambique and Sierra
Leone, long enough to build up a lifetime of memories.

"In Sierra Leone, there was no medical care available in the east of
the country, but refugees including starving children were arriving
there in massive numbers," he said.

The French doctors, as they are sometimes called, quickly set up a
centre there to help around 100 children, a hugely satisfying outcome
according to Chaix. But there is a dark side to such stories.

"I remember watching a two:year:old child suffering from cholera
literally die before my eyes. I had to learn that there was a lot we
could do, but that we could not help everyone."

MSF works mostly in crisis areas and war zones. Its teams can be
found in most of the planet’s hot spots, such as after the 2004 Asian
tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, in Sudan’s Darfur region or
in Lebanon this summer.

"Our emergency teams are always on the ground in a very short time,"
said Chaix. "Often the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
and ourselves are the only ones on the spot, so we have developed
some synergies even if our missions differ."

Aids The doctors who now work for MSF are different to their
predecessors.

New programmes now deal with fighting Aids and resistant forms
of tuberculosis, a huge challenge according to Chaix, a general
practitioner.

"Aids is a terrifying pandemic that is spreading throughout the world,"
he said. "Each year, it kills three million people, the equivalent
of ten tsunamis, and Africa is worst off."

MSF has been offering Aids treatments since 2001, with around 80,000
people getting antiretroviral therapy. The organisation has also been
demanding cheaper access to drugs since 1999.

"If generics were produced massively in countries like India, the
price of treatment per patient and per year would drop from thousands
of dollars to just $300," added Chaix.

Precarious Humanitarian work has also become more dangerous for
MSF. Its members followed the arrival of foreign soldiers in Iraq
and Afghanistan very quickly, causing some parts of the population
to assimilate them to invaders.

Chaix reckons this is why five MSF representatives were killed in
Afghanistan in 2003, even though the organisation is careful to
highlight its independence.

When he returns from one of the planet’s many hotspots to the Swiss
health system, one of the world’s most expensive, Chaix says he finds
his marks very quickly.

He is always surprised how fast he slips back into his bad old ways.

"You get upset about the tram being three minutes late, whereas before
you were quite happy if you could get from A to B within a day,"
he admitted.

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