Haiti, Camus, the Surgeon

I can’t say I really know him, but one’s got to help a neighbor hasn’t one?

No, we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to do what good lay in our power.

– Albert Camus, The Plague

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Before I read The Plague by Albert Camus, I was very familiar with it. The Plague tells of the moral and ethical responses to the arrival of the bubonic plague in the Algerian port city of Oran. My older brother read it as a pre-med student, and the novel was formative in his thinking about the world, his obligations to it and moral decision-making.

Clearly, Brendan was moved by the narrator, Dr. Rieux, who accepts the moral challenge and cares for the ill, despite the grave risk to himself. And, so, in his career as a surgeon, Brendan has provided pro bono services to those in need, most recently for two weeks per year in Haiti.

Just a week ago, he received a three word e-mail message from his hospital colleagues in Haiti: WE NEED YOU! He arrived in Haiti within 72 hours and worked tirelessly for a week straight, probably to the point of exhaustion.

His decision criterion? I am guessing it was simple, something like Dr. Rieux’s: “There’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is – common decency.”