Doctors in the service of the International Committee of the Red Cross

Extract

From the very beginning, the Red Cross has been closely linked, with doctors and with all whose task it is to heal, the finest of vocations.

The Red Cross was in fact created a hundred years ago to provide against deficiencies in the Army Medical Services. This was an essentially medical factor which has continued to exist in every facet of Red Cross work, even when this work has exceeded its bounds and extended not only to the various victims of conflicts, but also in time of peace to life's victims—the sick.

Both the Red Cross and doctors have the same aim: to struggle against suffering and death. There can therefore never be too close co-operation between them. Without doctors the Red Cross would be nothing. The Red Cross, for its part, has obtained bases for doctors rendering their action possible in time of war and which are precisely contained in the Geneva Conventions.