MSF: TOUCHED BY FIRE: doctors without borders in a third world crisis.

"...a testament to the human spirit",
... US PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

"...unforgettably haunting photographs."
... The Globe & Mail, Toronto, Canada.

"An intellectually stimulating volume."
... The Globe & Mail, Toronto, Canada.

"Compelling and frank."
...Michelle McAfee, Canadian Press.

"Few will be able to read his devastating book without
crying or becoming infuriated."
...William Beatty, BOOKLIST, (American Library Association.)

When the rapes and massacres, the plagues, the famines, the floods, or droughts erupt in far-off places, the world stands still but MSF does not.

While others are stymied or delayed by bureaucratic red tape, the men and women of Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) move in. They provide food and clean water. They dig latrines, They set up first aid stations and field hospitals. They are often the last to remain in situations abandoned by others as too dangerous.

The risks they take are moral and ethical as well as mortal. They are acutely aware that giving aid is controversial. Does it really do any good to save a child from murder one day when it will probably starve in the weeks ahead? Is it appropriate to bring expensive western medicine into a country that, in the long run, can't afford it? Should relief be giveno civilians who are being starved on purpose, as part of a cynical political game, by a local warlord?

Elliott Leyton and Greg Locke saw something of the implications of these questions when they travelled to Rwanda in 1996. There they found themselves plunged into a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Hundreds of thousands of people were on the move. Armed militias and hostile armies lurked in the background. Mass starvation, plague, and an eruption into civil or criminal violence were immediate possibilities. The two Canadians, one an internationally recognized expert on the psychology of killing, the other, an experienced international photojournalist, had the rare opportunity to observe MSF in action.

They watched and listened, to the perpetrators of violence and their victims, to survivors and those who gave them assistance, and, above all, the people of MSF who dedicate themselves to saving lives because, in the words of one MSFer "The world can afford a humanitarian idea."

The result of Leyton and Locke's research is an extraordinary written and visual record of small miracles performed in the midst of catastrophe. see below for excerpt and photo gallery.

ISBN#0-7710-5305-3,
published by McClelland and Stewart Inc (Toronto, Canada )
This book is available through your local bookseller or online at

TOUCHED BY FIRE: doctors without borders in a third world crisis

(C) Elliott Leyton 1998

...from chapter 3. Emergency Medecin in the Third World.

She is amputating the boy's arm and leg: in a spray on blood and bone chips, the MSF surgeon's saw slices through the devastated tissue. The boy is fourteen. They have removed his right forearm below the elbow, and his right leg below the knee, because a few hours earlier he had with foolish curiosity touched a landmine.

Somehow, he managed to cling to life despite the shock and bloodloss. Now his severed stumps flop like dead fish over the side of the stretcher as he is carried, unconscious, out of the operating room.

MSF doctors are highly skilled at such amputations - after all, they do so many of them around the world.
Carmen is proud of her surgical skill, her ability to save so many limbs and lives, as she should be. She joins us for lunch but does not share our food. "I do not eat," she says and a glance at her birdlike frame suggests she may not exaggerate much.

...from chapter 6. The Ecstacy of Moral Clarity.

In the crisis zone, MSFers act as if they do not care they are taking terrible risks; or that in helping one they may unintentionally assist another who is less deserving; or whether aid is or is not "a good investment." They go about their business with that single minded energy that accompanies a clear sense of purpose. It is what they know how to do, it is worth doing; and they do it better then almost anyone else.

Working for MSF liberates them as human beings, freeing them from the triviality of personal woes and the mindlessness of modern life. Focusing utterly on their acts, they give witness to the abominations in the world and treat its survivors.

In acting thus, their personal dilemmas dissolve and their identities fuse. Through their healing gifts of medicine and emotional connection, they achieve a kind of heart-pounding ecstasy

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