An Imperfect Offering: Dispatches from the medical frontline - Softcover

Orbinski, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846041023 ISBN 13: 9781846041020

Publisher: Rider, 2009

Synopsis

Born in Britain in 1960, James Orbinski's family moved to Canada when he was seven years old. As a young man, he became a medic to learn how to help, and deal with, the suffering of others. From then on he was plunged into many highly demanding situations, including being Head of Mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) during the Rwandan genocide; engaging with the politics of humanitarian work as the President of MSF; being in New York when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell on September 11; co-founding Dignitas International (an AIDS charity); and finally, returning to Rwanda on the 10th anniversary of the crisis there.

In An Imperfect Offering, Orbinski not only tells his own inspiring story but is also remarkably provocative about what governments and agencies should and shouldn't be doing to help the world's poor and very sick. At the same time, he addresses what part each of us can play, so that we never lose sight of the dignity of those being helped, or deny them the right to act in their own lives. His conclusion is blunt and profound: 'Humanity is lost or saved one person at a time, one intention at a time, and one action at a time. There are no utopias waiting to be born. There is only what we do - what you choose to do...'

About this title

Review:

"He tells his extraordinary story in unpretentious, carefully weighed prose" (Observer)

"Fascinating" (Daily Mail)

"James Orbinski has lived for years in the middle of the worst that humans can be, and somehow emerged with both his compassion and his desire to understand us intact...the stories he has to tell are some of the most powerful I have ever read" (Stephanie Nolen, author of 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa)

"In a narrative of grace and power, [Orbinski] displays the intense components of his remarkable life: integrity, compassion and principle" (Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and author of Race Against Time)

"An essential text for our dire times. Orbinski plunges into the heartbreak, the maelstrom, the moral dilemmas of the genocide territories of the world - Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan - and finds there enough courage and redemption for us all to feel there is hope for our sad humanity." (Ariel Dorfman)

Book Description:

Orbinski captures exactly the horror of the surgeon overwhelmed by casualties...It is his sheer, human, stick-at-your-post courage that is most estimable

About this edition

• Publisher: Rider
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1846041023
• ISBN 13: 9781846041020
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448