TNMC

Living in Emergency is a documentary about the organization Doctors Without Borders.  They recruit doctors from all over the world to send to war torn regions or areas battered by natural disaster.  It specifically follows four doctors in Liberia and Congo.  Two are on their first six month tours and two are veterans of multiple tours.

Avoiding a comparison to MASH is almost impossible.  The doc looks at real life and tells us that the TV show was on the right track.  The reality is of course much harsher and brutal.  How the docotors stand it at all is pretty amazing.  They never have enough staff or proper equipment.  One scene where a decision must be made to drill into a man's head to alleviate pressure on the brain is harrowing.  They don't have the right drill and they don't really know what they will find.  The doctor is forced to just make a guess with little info and no time, with a life hanging in the balance.

I love the way the documentary moves rapidly from doctor to doctor to case to case.  It's disorienting and hard to keep track of at times but it evokes a sense of what the doctors must deal with on their missions.

The documentary is essentially warts and all.  The doctors fight and argue and egos clash.  They drink and smoke and swear and say stupid obnoxious things.  And it is completely understandable.  They wouldn't be human if they dealt with this chaos with calm politeness.  Sometimes they cross lines that would be career killing in civilized areas.  There it earns them a simple rebuke from another doctor.  The scale of events is so different that everything must be taken at a different level from what we would consider normal.

This isn't for the weak of stomach.  The cameras don't go out of their way to find gore but when they do, the gaze is unflinching.  Repeatedly I sat slack jawed at horrible injuries, maladies or remedies.  Most horror movies would have to tip their hat to this movie's queasiness factor.  And this one doesn't have to fake it.

Sadly, for all the tough heroic work these doctors do, their efforts seem to comprise little more than a finger in the dike.  The killing overwhelms their efforts.  At one point it is very clear that one bullet had the power to take a life and it took about a half dozen doctors to take it back.  They simply can't keep up.  And yet they soldier on in spite of the numbers.  At least they saved that one life.  That has to be enough.

Another thing that stands out is the decision of when to end a mission.  Their resources are limited, so when one area stabilizes, even a bit, they have to leave in favor of an area in worse shape.  This means leaving behind people who still desperately need help.  The doctors often have to face anger from the very people they have helped and saved because there is more to be done and they have to leave before it can be done.  This contributes significantly to the burnout factor.

It says that more than 2 billion people in the world have no access to any medical care at all.  That's a sobering thought in this country where we argue like petulant children over how to manage our superb and extensive health care.  We don't realize how good we have it.