War doctor Surgery on the front line

David Nott

Book - 2020

For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world's most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital. The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal. Driven both by compass...ion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time has gone on, David Nott began to realize that flying into to a catastrophe whether war or natural disaster was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the Foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets. War Doctor is his extraordinary story.

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
New York, N. Y. : Abrams Press 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
David Nott (author)
Other Authors
Henry Marsh, 1950- (writer of introduction), Eleanor Nott (writer of afterword)
Item Description
First published 2019 by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan.
Physical Description
xvi, 287 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781419744242
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Bomb Factory
  • 2. Two Epiphanies
  • 3. Welcome to Sarajevo
  • 4. Damage Control
  • 5. Flying In
  • 6. Under African Skies
  • 7. Trauma School
  • 8. Return to Syria
  • 9. Sniper City
  • 10. Lifeline
  • 11. The Razor's Edge
  • 12. Physician, Heal Thyself
  • 13. Escape from Aleppo
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

In this remarkable memoir, National Health Service surgeon Nott recounts his quarter century of humanitarian volunteer work in areas of conflict and disaster performing life-saving surgery in conditions ranging from difficult to nigh impossible. From Sarajevo to Syria, with missions all over Africa and Afghanistan in between, Nott and his colleagues selflessly put themselves in danger for the sake of others and saved many lives. Nott draws a sharp contrast between humanitarians and the inhumanity of the bad guys, from machete-wielding rebels severing limbs of random government supporters with drug-fueled ferocity in Sierra Leone, to the Assad regime using helicopters to drop barrel bombs--designed to inflict maximum casualties--on civilian buildings in Aleppo. Nott relates his extensive knowledge of trauma surgery and medicine to the events he writes about in a fluid prose style that is readily understandable to readers outside the health-care profession. The result is a remarkably powerful personal and expert account of the drastic toll war exacts on human beings and a stirring bringing-to-light of the many ways people behind the scenes help mitigate the damage.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A physician's memoir of service in war zones around the world.Even during training, British surgeon Nott thrilled to hear stories of colleagues who delivered care in poor, often war-torn nations. After receiving a post at Charing Cross Hospital in London in 1992, he proceeded to do the same. Many international charities, such as the Red Cross, require a substantial commitment, so they often attract retirees or the wealthy. Like many physicians in their prime, Nott chose to work with Doctors Without Borders, founded in France, which accepts volunteers for as little as a few weeks. Almost immediately, the author was sent to Sarajevo, under siege during the vicious civil war in the former Yugoslavia. There followed tours in Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Haiti, Palestine, and, more recently, Syria, where he encountered countless heartbreaking examples of the enormous suffering humans inflict on each other in times of political violence and war. Quickly learning that dealing with the catastrophic injuries from explosives and high-velocity bullets required skills not taught during surgical training, he found himself making lifesaving decisions under primitive conditions, often without technical aids. Most readers will know what to expect, and Nott does not disappoint, delivering riveting, generally gruesome stories of victims who came under his care and the professionals, mostly admirable, who worked with him. He is not shy about discussing his work, so readers will learn much about how battle surgeons go about their job. Nott soon discovered that this was knowledge other volunteers and nearly all local doctors were also lacking, so he began to teach a course entitled "Surgical Techniques in Austere Environments," which caught on. The author's efforts to publicize these horrors made him well knownand this book was a No. 1 bestseller in Britainbut unfortunately persuaded no Western governments to take action to end them, which they (unlike the humanitarian organizations) had the power to accomplish.A series of gripping and fascinating medical stories. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.