“It was a major shock when I got here,” says Tom Krueger. “You can’t describe the sweat down your back, the smell of the pus that hits your nose.” Krueger is a doctor with the Medecins Sans Frontieres (msf). He is speaking of the pain of working at Mamba Point Hospital, the only free hospital serving about a million people in Liberia’s capital Monrovia. The hospital opened in 2003 at the end of a 15-year civil war.
Krueger is among the subjects of Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders. Recently named to the Academy Awards’ documentary short list, the Mark Hopkins film follows Krueger and three other msf doctors in Liberia.
One doctor on a first mission to Liberia, Davinder Gill, is aggravated by the lack of supplies.
“It was clear to me from the outset that patients would be dying at night and I wouldn’t be there,” he says.
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