I am currently reading James Orbinski’s “An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century” and am having trouble putting it down. Orbinski is one of the founders of the Canadian branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders/MSF); in 1994 he served as Chef de Mission for MSF in Kigali, Rwanda during the horrific civil war and genocide.   As president of MSF, the doctor and humanitarian accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on their behalf in 1999; his remarkable Nobel Lecture is available here.

George Stroumboulopoulos interviewed Dr. Orbinski on CBC’s “The Hour”; watch it here.

CBC’s “Sunday” interviewed Dr. Orbinski about his new book; watch it here.

This link will take you to a radio interview with James Orbinski on CBC’s “Sounds Like Canada”.

CBC’s documentary, “Evil Revisited”, was awarded the 2005 Canadian Radio Television News Directors Association Award. Dr. Orbinski returns to Rwanda with CBC journalist Sasa Petricic in this incredibly moving piece.

Dr Orbinski is one of the founders of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, a not-for-profit pharmaceutical research and development entity focused on the diseases of the South. He recently co-founded Dignitas, an organization focused on community based treatment, care and prevention of HIV in the developing world.

This book, and this man speak to me on a very deep level. Each of us is responsible for each other, and each of us needs to act. As Vikram Seth so eloquently puts it in his book, “Two Lives: a Memoir”:

“May we see that we could have been born as each other.”