20 MB - University of Toronto Magazine

Dr. James Orbinski visits adisplaced persons camp in Goma,Democratic Republic of CongoPHOTOGRAPHY: STEVE SIMONhours of gangrene or sepsis. On the one hand it is absolutelyideal that he’s alive, and on the other hand it’s far from idealthat he is without a leg. But here we are.”Orbinski was born in England in 1960, and his Irishbornparents immigrated to Canada with their fouryoung children when Orbinski was seven. The family settledin the Montreal neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce,then home to many English-speaking immigrants and workingpoor. Orbinski recounts in his book how, at the age ofnine, he learned “a different knowing of death” – thathumans didn’t only die naturally, but at the hands of oneanother. He saw a television program on the Holocaust, withimages of people lying dead at Auschwitz and of a womanwith numbers tattooed on her forearm. The next day,Orbinski’s mother took him to the Jewish quarter of the city,as she did before the start of every school year, to buy himnew shoes. A very kind old man with beautiful eyes helpedhim, and called him a good boy. He noticed the man hadnumbers tattooed on his arm. Orbinski woke up crying thatnight, after having nightmares of himself, family membersand the old man taking off their new shoes for the Nazis.As Orbinski became older, he knew he wanted to helprelieve the suffering of others. He earned a psychologydegree from Trent University, and was employed for twoyears as a youth worker at a juvenile detention centre inCalgary. He then entered McMaster University as a medicalstudent and became immediately enthralled with the studyof immunology. Orbinski speaks often about the idea of “livingyour question.” In his book, he describes his question as,“How am I to be, how are we to be in relation to the sufferingof others?” In his gentle, thoughtful tone, he elaborateson this concept. “To enter into what draws you, what callsyou, is to live your question…. I have always been fascinatedwith science, particularly with the methodology of science,and what this means in terms of action – what you cando with what you know. My questions have really come outof these loves and I’ve been drawn to what is classicallydefined as humanitarian medicine, humanitarian work.”Orbinski’s humanitarian journey began in earnest at age27, when he obtained a fellowship to research pediatricHIV/AIDS in Rwanda. For a year, he worked at hospitals andclinics and witnessed extreme poverty, malnutrition and theprevalence of diseases such as polio, which left many paralyzedand would have been easily contained within theCanadian medical system. He became engrossed with moralquestions surrounding the unequal distribution of resources,and the economic and political forces that caused such severeinequities. After returning to McMaster, Orbinski heard thatstudent Richard Heinzl (BSc 1986 UC), was creating aCanadian chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières – an internationalgroup that provides medical assistance to victims ofwar and other catastrophes. The organization practiced strictimpartiality while assisting victims, providing aid basedsolely on need and irrespective of politics, race or religion.However, MSF differed from groups such as the Red Cross inthat members spoke out against human rights violations tocreate public awareness of atrocities. Orbinski became afounding member of MSF Canada, and one of his first missionswas to Baidoa, Somalia, in October 1992. Hundreds ofthousands had already died in the famine induced by a civilwar that had been raging for two years. More than half of thecountry’s eight million people were on the verge of starvation.In the midst of rampant violence, Orbinski and otherMSF team members provided medical care at clinics andfeeding centres in Baidoa and surrounding villages. Theyoften treated up to 2,000 patients a day, while hundreds morewaited outside clinics suffering from starvation and the diseasesthat accompany it.But it was the Rwandan Genocide, during whichOrbinski served as MSF’s head of mission, that he has called20 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MAGAZINE / SPRING 2008