I knew that to be able to find the Professor it would have to be in mid-September, when he always teaches the Humanitarian Medicine elective course to year 3 and 4 medical students.
Fernando de La Vieter Nobre, President and Founder of AMI (International Medical Assistance Foundation) for 35 years, has carried out projects in over 80 different countries. He graduated in Medicine from the Free University in Brussels (ULB), specializing in General Surgery and Urology. He was an Anatomy and Embryology professor at ULB. And despite his clinical practice in Belgium, he was the first Portuguese to bring the Urologist Award of the European Urologist Association to Portugal. He also received from two French presidents the highest French award: the Légion d‘Honneur.
Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, in fact his great historical mark was engraved when he crossed the world as a Doctor without Borders. This does not detract from the scientific recognition supported at the time by Professor David Ferreira and recognized by the Faculty of Medicine of ULisboa, which awarded him the Honoris causa degree. He was part of the General Council of the University of Lisbon, but left a year before the end of his term, when he decided to embark on politics. At that time, he also suspended, to this day, his position as Master of the Grande Oriente Lusitano, Freemasonry.
He began to do humanitarian work with Doctors Without Borders in France, an experience that would lead him to create Doctors Without Borders in Belgium. He toured the world, much of it when it was at war, where even the teams of journalists did not want to go. When I ask him if he was ever afraid, he recalls with natural peace of mind an occasion in West Beirut where he operated in an underground hospital over 500 meters deep. One night, when he was leaving, he felt a bullet pass to his left ear, which even got scraped. It was not a lost bullet, but a specialized sniper who wanted to shoot him down. Luck or fate made him jump to the side where the sniper lost sight of him. This man in his thirties, already a father of two children still too young to be left without him, narrowly escaped. At that point, he asked himself in the split second when he was struggling between the death attempt and fate, “How stupid, what are you doing here? Tomorrow you will be found here in a pool of blood and ask why did you leave your children?" Not even that fear of short shelf life as if it was a food product made him stop. He carried on.
But what makes such a man move on without fear?
He was born in Angola, then an overseas province. His mother is of Dutch origin from France, and despite the 20 years he lived in Brussels and where he had his first two children (a boy and a girl), he nevertheless accepts no nationality other than Portuguese. Portugal was the country where he definitely came to and married for the second and last time, as he stressed out, Maria Luísa Nemésio, paternal granddaughter of writer Vitorino Nemésio. From this marriage two more daughters were born.
He leaves the classroom softly while holding a hat and a book that he would later strongly recommend me ("21 Lessons for the 21st Century" by Yuval Harari). I look at him strangely… Fernando Nobre, whom I had met 20 years ago on a television show where he told us only about his side as a doctor in the world, had a different face… In front of me sits someone whose age was shown by the colour of his hair and the general features of his face, with another line of eyes… I was preparing the conversation to start by asking him about his path as a doctor of a more unprotected humanity, but I did not have the time, he cut my first question with some political explanations. The only theme I had decided not to approach.
The truth is that this role is part of his CV. I thought he would not want to mention it, but not only was I wrong but I also realized that it was a very important subject. It was on 19 February 2010 that Fernando Nobre presented his candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic. He tells me that he believed that Portugal could be "restarted" and that is why he realized that the Monument to the Discoveries had this symbolism, "perhaps too ambitious", he says. Inspired by D. João II, the "Perfect Prince" and his favourite King, Fernando de La Vieter Noble argued that he could structure his country, leaving a heritage as historic as that of the time of the seas.
Candidate Nobre did not win, thus ending his purpose on 21 June. From that time, he recalls a phone call he made to the then Presidential winner, Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva. He had called to congratulate him, but he still brightens up today by saying that he heard that "there were two winners. Cavaco Silva for obvious reasons and Fernando Nobre for the results he had, being an independent candidate”.
Politics had come to stay in his life, with 600,000 confidence votes. In April he received a new invitation from the leader of the PSD party, Pedro Passos Coelho. The proposal was to be No. 1 of the PSD, as an independent, by the Lisbon circle. He won. Underlying this proposal was if the party formed government, Fernando Nobre would be the President of the Assembly of the Republic. On 5 June there were legislative elections, the PSD won, joining the CDS. On 20 June the election to preside over the Assembly was held. But his 108 votes did not reach the 116 needed to be President of the Assembly. He decided that there was only one thing to do, to resign. He did so on 1 July, when his letter was read in plenary.
During this almost a year and a half of political twists and turns, the doctor never stopped treating and the humanist never stopped travelling the world calling for the protection of the weak. And perhaps that is his reason for telling me that he is someone with "nonpartisan political experience and also a true humanist". The 40 years of active life prove it.
I remember your period of campaigning for the presidential elections well. As I prepared for this interview, I decided that I was going to ask everything but politics. And that's precisely where you want to start talking to me. Why is that?
Fernando Nobre: Because it was a very important period of my life.
Had a big impact on you, did it?
Fernando Nobre: It had a huge impact! It took me maybe a half a dozen years to digest everything that happened.
Why? Because disappointments build up?
Fernando Nobre: Very many. Betrayals too... If in these 35 years of AMI, and as a doctor, I knew the country in its social component, with these elections I met another very important country: I visited homes, institutions, misericórdias, fairs. I contacted many people on the street, with many mayors from all parties and always felt very accepted. Therefore, the mark in my life is also due to the richness of the experience.
Was it Angola that inspired you to say one day that you "wanted to be the earth's doctor"?
Fernando Nobre: I don't know if it was just Angola. I tell you something else, I wanted my passport to say "a citizen of the earth". And I hope we get there...
You have this utopia that we will be "all citizens of the earth"? Sorry, I'm already being biased because I'm calling it utopia...
Fernando Nobre: No, no, don't say that! What a beautiful word. Because it is thanks to utopias that we have advanced and we must have them. As my friend Sophia de Mello Breyner said, "Nothing is more difficult than the accommodated man". If I was to accommodate myself I would be what my father wanted, "just" a teaching surgeon at the University of Brussels. I had my family there and therefore my whole life was settled, as my father wanted. He wished he me to attain the position of Full Professor there. But you know that my multiple genetic laws, since I am a mixture of many origins, made me realize that Brussels was not enough for me. I think, however, that since childhood my fate was to be a doctor, but looking at the world. (He stops and thinks) I regret nothing of what I did.
Why did you leave Brussels if everything was solid there?
Fernando Nobre: In fact, the big reason was AMI. One day, after several missions on the border between Sudan's Darfur and Chad, where I was leading a team of Doctors without Borders from France, I was accompanied by a team of L'Express journalists and a photographer from Sigma agency. At the border port, the Sudanese authorities decided to let only the medical staff (me as a surgeon, a nurse, an anaesthesiologist and a general practitioner) go through, and prevented journalists from entering Chad, where there was a war with Libya. I put my foot down. We had spent the last 4 days travelling in a jeep and it seemed very unethical and even cowardly to cross the border and ignore them. So I said either everyone goes through or no one does. It was very complicated, but after an afternoon of hard negotiations, they let them all go in.
Were you not afraid?
Fernando Nobre: No! (He laughs). I felt fear under other circumstances. Over there the most they could do to me was to slap my face, I don't know... And so we went in and the team accompanied us to the oasis where we set up our field "hospital". Then the team moved on to cover the war in Libya. Later, when this news was published in L'Express, it came with my photograph operating in a tent, with a paragraph that said something like: "Fernando, a young surgeon of Portuguese origin"... They were a few lines below the picture. But it was enough to be seen by a RTP team who ended up contacting me and did a major reportage about me in Chad and that had a huge impact in Portugal. This made the Health Minister invite me to meet him when travelling to Portugal. I came. It was 1983. And he challenged me to create an institution that would support the Portuguese population in the countryside. Then I remembered that from my experience and the image of what I had already created in other countries, I could bring the same concept to Portugal. And AMI was born in December 1984.
Is it this humanitarian activity and the permanent trips abroad that justify leaving the clinical activity at the age of 50?
Fernando Nobre: It was not compatible! Not for a surgeon. Operating and a few days later leaving to the world was unethical. And I mostly worked in a private practice in Portugal and that didn't fulfil my expectations compared to when I worked in excellent research hospitals.
It is also very curious how frontally you assume your connection to Freemasonry. Few people speak of this connection, as if there is a secret, or something dark behind it...
Fernando Nobre: But I have no problem assuming it. Look, I don't deny anything that belonged to my past. It is the same as telling you that I have 4% black blood from my ancestors. Yes, what is the problem? And yes, I am a Mason. I assumed it for the first time on television in an interview with Mário Crespo. Immediately afterwards I received a message from my dear late friend António Arnaut (the “father” of the NHS and former Grand Master of GOL) congratulating me on my courage.
But it takes courage to say that you belong to Freemasonry, I still don't understand...
Fernando Nobre: I do not know why. Freemasonry is a movement of good men and women, rarely has mixed lodges (lodges are the spaces where they meet), usually they are separated. It is a movement born to defend values and to discuss philosophical and non-conspiratorial issues. The problem is that even in the highest places there are social dramas, but these have to be identified and resolved. I assume myself as a sleeping Mason. I only got in at 51 and left almost at 58. I met good people, I met others who, I confess, I did not like much. If there was an operative Masonry in the construction of cathedrals throughout Europe, it was always fostering the degrees of apprentice, fellow craft and master. Today Freemasonry is a symbolic movement that remains reserved and has to be. Notice that all dictatorships imposed not to belong to secret movements, so some of us in the past were at risk.
What message do you attempt to pass on to your students of the elective subject Humanitarian Medicine?
Fernando Nobre: As you know, I teach this subject to year 3 and 4 students over two semesters. At most there are thirty students per class. Do you know what I am trying to pass on to them? That this humanitarian medicine is one of great disasters and one of great need. It requires global knowledge of medicine, one has to have a vast cultural universe, as well as much religious, political, diplomatic and geographical knowledge. Then, the best student in each semester receives, from AMI, a "solidary adventure." This allows them to go to Senegal, Guinea Bissau or the Brazilian Northeast, so that they can better understand other experiences. I give them my technical experience and raise their awareness to the need to act with minimal resources. And do you know why? Because most of the time we worked without a single blood test or X-ray, so the students will have to improve the clinical history and know how to do clinical examinations that require careful observation and not just putting data on the computer. As I always say to my students, “the creation of the diagnosis always corresponds to a criminal investigation. The doctor is looking for the criminal, which may be bacteria, a virus, a cancer cell, many things”. It is only after these first steps and tuning of what we feel may be the diagnosis that we need further tests. One must not lose this notion of what it is to be a doctor, which is to look at the other.
Do you still have any utopia?
Fernando Nobre: (He shows signs of emotion) May the human being remember a path of spirituality, understanding... (he is staring endlessly) Utopia would be to save this planet, because if we do not do it quickly and in a global effort among all States, then I dare not even think what will happen…
Often at night, in the many hours he is awake, Fernando de La Vieter Noble remembers friends, or those who called him and he could not arrive on time. He tells me about a French journalist friend, Patricia, who, after being caught in a bombardment and having several shrapnel, was for hours calling for him to save her. But the doctor and friend Fernando was already on his way to another conflict. He dreams of those he was not able to save for only a few seconds and others who, thanks to him, live with great dignity. He feels perplexed when, wide awake, he senses an almost "climatic apocalypse", the effect of man's nefarious aggression on man himself and the environment; or when he thinks about the massive development of robotics and the "ongoing arms race".
He tells me that "there is a drumming that he hears" at night that makes him vigilant in thoughts, perhaps alarmed and without concrete solutions to the phenomena that bring forth tragic outcomes for humanity. He also thinks of his daughters who are away and complain about having always had "an airplane father" who still today sees less of his granddaughter than he would have liked, something that happens to those who want to send messages to the world while there is time.
It is intrinsic to him to travel the world. As a humanist traveller, he says, with some nostalgia or perhaps disenchantment, that he is a "falling star moving to the final crash".
In December AMI will be 35 years old. For the time being, Fernando de La Vieter Nobre is continuing to prepare a generation he wants to be his heir that will continue AMI and his views and actions. An AMI prepared to adapt to the new times ahead. At the same time, he is trying to pass some messages as a lecturer to his curious students, so that they can distinguish the urban doctor from the one who walks on the battlefield.
He assumes that no matter how many messages he tries to pass to the world, in his country, to the youngest or most influential, he himself fears what he sees. When this happens he tells me that he always thinks of the same phrase someone once quoted to him: "When you don't know where you are going, look where you came from".
Is this enough for the world too, so that it will not be lost for good?
The man without borders, the man of the world could not answer me.
