Doctors Without Borders
Ξ December 1st, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Philanthropy, Uncategorized |
When I was ten years old I landed myself in the emergency room with a forearm full of glass shards sitting just millimeters away from my ulnar artery. The glass was there because my brother and I were tormenting each other in the house and the chase ended with my arm going through a window. Luckily, my mom was in the house and whisked me off to the hospital. In the waiting room, I sat with my feet dangling from the chair while my mom simultaneously filled out insurance forms and held my arm in the air with a bloodsoaked rag, telling me everything was going to be okay. As it always is with mothers, she was more terrified than I was.
When it was my turn to be seen, I laid on my back and calmly watched as the doctors pulled pieces of glass out of my open flesh, washed the blood out with water and went in for more before finally sewing me up with over twenty stitches that zigzagged across my soft forearm. The doctor and nurses kept me going by telling me how tough I was for not crying when a soldier on the bed next to mine was bawling. Even now, my mom often recounts how incredible it was that I just sat and watched my ragged arm being fixed as though it belonged to someone else. I wasn’t tough. If that happened to me today, I’d probably react far more frantically than I did back then. I was just too naive to believe anything but what I was being told - “stay calm, you’re going to be fine, you’re a tough boy”.
At that age, you take everything for granted. I couldn’t comprehend that my mom wouldn’t be there to take care of me or that we wouldn’t have a car to drive to the hospital in or that competent doctors wouldn’t be on duty ready to put me back together. There isn’t even the tiniest sliver of doubt in a ten year old brain that if you get hurt someone will be there to fix you. Looking back, I wonder how different that situation would have been if I had happened to grow up in a warzone, a genocide or had just been unlucky enough to get trapped in a natural disaster. The medical care I thought was a natural right is unfortunately a luxury to many people in those situations. The certainty I had that everything was going to be taken care of and all I had to do was sit and wait for things to get better, is something every child should have, but doesn’t.
This is why Doctors Without Borders was formed. This amazing organization was founded on the belief that medical care should be offered with total neutrality to people of all races and backgrounds in all parts of the world. Their pledge of impartiality is part of what makes them such an amazing group of people because it ensures that their only concern is providing medical care to people who are suffering. Because 89% of their funding comes from private sources they are able to act totally independently of any political, religious or military agendas. As it says on their website, “MSF is neutral. The organization does not take sides in armed conflicts, provides care on the basis of need alone, and pushes for increased independent access to victims of conflict as required under international humanitarian law.”
Their impartiality doesn’t make them push-overs though. They always enter a new territory solely to offer medical assistance, but what they bear witness to on the job often compells them to act as whistle-blowers as well. Again, their website says, “In 1985, MSF spoke out against the Ethiopian government’s forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of its population; took the unprecedented step of calling for an international military response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide; condemned the Serbian massacre of civilians at Srebrenica in 1995; denounced the Russian bombardment of the Chechen capital, Grozny in 1999; and called for international attention to the crisis in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 at the United Nations Security Council.”
Doctors Without Borders truly gets it. They are human beings out to help other human beings. In an age where wealth distribution is becoming increasingly uneven, the selflessness of those lucky and wealthy enough to have gone to medical school putting their lives at risk for others is truly inspiring. No one wants to grow up in a place where there aren’t enough hospitals for everyone. Thank God that Doctors Without Borders is willing to try to fix that.
