Jakob Sturzenegger was born on 23 May 1926 in St Gallen, Switzerland. After doing his primary, secondary and professional schooling in that same city, he worked for several years for the Swiss national railway company. Shifting gears, he then decided to study medicine – which he did in Zurich and Paris from 1951 to 1957 – and went on to specialize in surgery.
After gaining his early hospital experience in Switzerland, Jakob followed his humanitarian instincts and began providing his much-needed services in various developing countries. From 1961 to 1963 he worked in Congo, as the district medical officer for the World Health Organization, and as the head of the Swiss Red Cross’s hospital in Kinshasa. From there he went on to Rwanda where, from 1964 to 1966, he was in charge of Rwamagana Hospital on behalf of Switzerland’s overseas development and cooperation agency (the forerunner of today’s Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). He also spent six months in Korea serving as the delegation doctor at the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission.
In 1971, Jakob took on the role of permanent head of medical services for the Swiss Red Cross. The following year, in recognition of his extensive experience in the area of war surgery, the Swiss Red Cross appointed Jakob head of its medical team at the hospital in Luang Prabang, then the royal capital of Laos. In addition to enhancing the technical skills and level of service provided at the hospital, Jakob systematically trained local doctors and nurses. His efforts helped improve the health of numerous people in the region.
Over the years, Jakob made his mark at both the individual level and within his profession more broadly. In one particularly notable example of the former, he courageously removed an unexploded grenade from the leg of an 18-year-old girl in Luang Prabang. And in an example of the latter, Jakob helped streamline the Swiss Red Cross’s medical fieldwork by standardizing the equipment of the time as well as by reducing the number of drugs used from some 2,300 to 60.
In early 1975 the Swiss Red Cross asked Jakob to travel from Vientiane, Laos, where he was living with his wife and ten-year-old son, to southern Viet Nam to kick off a new assistance programme for victims of the ongoing war. He planned to use the opportunity to visit, on the ICRC’s behalf, prisoners who were being held in a camp in Saigon. Unfortunately, on 12 March, the Air Vietnam plane carrying Jakob and 30 other passengers and crew members from Vientiane to Saigon crashed – possibly owing to anti-aircraft fire – while flying over the conflict zone in southern Viet Nam. There were no survivors. Jakob was 49 years old. Malcolm ‘Mac’ Riding from New Zealand Red Cross was as well on board.
Jakob was a highly qualified and experienced war surgeon guided by a single-minded commitment to helping others. He put his unique skills to use however and wherever he could – whether as a hands-on practitioner, team leader or advisor. Once he had found his humanitarian path, he never deviated from it.