Louis Schittly, MD, a French physician who helped found Doctors Without Borders, has died at age 86, according to a Jan. 7 obituary published by The Washington Post. He died in Mullhouse, France on Jan. 1.
Dr. Schittly joined the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1968 to work in hospitals in Baifra, a region of Nigeria that was embroiled in civil war at the time. After the Nigerian government took control of the region in 1970, Dr. Schittly and others stayed for months, becoming known in the media as "the French doctors."
Later that year, Dr. Schittly and Bernard Kouchner, MD, who would later serve as a French foreign minister, formed the Emergency Medical-Surgical Intervention Group, known by the French acronym GIMCU. A second group, French Medical Relief, was also formed in 1970 to address the aftermath of a catastrophic cyclone that hit Bangladesh. In 1971, the two groups merged to become Doctors Without Borders.
Dr. Schittly worked on relief missions in Nicaragua and with Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War in the 1970s. He then reestablished himself as a physician in the small farming village of Benwiller, near the borders of Germany and Switzerland.
He later served as a French foreign minister alongside Dr. Kouchner, with whom he often clashed over humanitarian aid policy issues. In 1999, Doctors Without Borders was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in more than 80 nations.