An Imperfect Offering

James Orbinski is past international president of Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, and accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of MSF in 1999. Prior to joining MSF, he was a medical researcher in Rwanda in the late 1980s, and a family doctor in small town Canada. With MSF, he worked in Peru, in Somalia during its famine and civil war, in Afghanistan during its civil war, in Rwanda through the genocide and in Zaire during the slaughter that followed. In 1999, he helped launch MSF's Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, and he has spoken on behalf of MSF before the UN Security Council, the leaders of the World Health Organization, the United Nations High Commission for Relief, the World Bank, and at the White House and before government ministers and heads of state the world over. When his term as president of MSF ended in 2001, he worked as chair of MSF's Neglected Diseases Working Group. In 2004, he left MSF to found Dignitas International, an organization committed to community-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world. He lives in Canada.