Living in Emergency: Personal Stories of Doctors Without Borders

Everyone would certainly have heard about humanitarian missions in countries like Africa facing our planet's most dangerous and debilitating crises like natural disasters, epidemics, famine, malnutrition problems, civil wars arising from serious and often chronic sociocultural conflicts, political/economic instability and so on.

Living in Emergency interweaves the story of four doctors working at MSF:

• Davinder Gill, a young Australian anesthesiologist struggling with his first years of medical practice, almost completely abandoned on the field while striving to get as much routine as possible.
• Chiara Lepora, a smart and determined Italian toxicologist, expert in tropical medicine and Head of Mission, coordinating various locations where MSF settled down its camps, and trying all costs to maintain moral stability between MSF workers.
• Chris Brasher, an Australian anesthesiologist and MSF veteran.
• Tom Krueger, an American surgeon, tired of american business-based healthcare, now trying his best in the operating-room of the Liberian capital.

The stories interlock doctor's motivation, circumstances, and mainly personal opinions drawing a universal distinction between war-torn countries and western society. The movie strongly focuses on daily stress, exposing the relationships between hospital workers, stressful decision making process in extreme situations, almost always without adequate medical instruments and technology.

Filming war victims is hard, dangerous and often non-ethical in war regions. After several attempts to get allowance from MSF cost approximately six months, director Mark N. Hopkins, maybe the only one, finally succeeded creating an outstanding documentary.

Usually the vast majority of people residing in highly developed continents like Europe or North America are only informed by local media host's news about what's happening in poor countries, and topics about crises regularly make up only the 5% of all news without really stressing the severity of these phenomenas. Various humanitarian non-governmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders (MSF), are continuously struggling with everyday care in war-torn regions. These organizations mainly rely on donations, and other kinds of sponsors that promote an almost continuous support of medical supplies, and also gives opportunities to build special medical facilities abroad.

The documentary was shot in the period after the Second Liberian Civil War and in the North-East region of Democratic Republic of Congo during a still ongoing conflict after the Second Congo War. During the movie the viewer may experience shocking scenes mixed with cases of sudden death unexpected by doctors, the murdering of an entire family with only one survivor, a child who's rather suffering the loss of his parents than his injured arm from gunshots.
Doctors cannot overcome stressful situations so easily, alcohol, smoking, sex and even drugs are considered acceptable ways to overcome psychical traumas.

Nowadays volunteering has become a trend. A lot of pensioned people, but also young adults are approaching humanitarian thinking. Is it worth seeing this movie? Yes it is. Today, people are strangely becoming bored of having all kinds of services accessible, sometimes the real connection between humans are more honest in developing countries than in developed ones. Get ready for 90 minutes of pure "otherside".