Blood On My Hands: A surgeon at war

MEDIA RELEASE | Wild Dingo Press

This unique story of compassion and humanity set against the backdrop of a war-torn country is truly inspiring. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting. Eva Orner, Academy Award-winning producer

Blood On My Hands
A surgeon at war
Craig Jurisevic

Published by Wild Dingo Press | May 2010 | $34.95
Distributed in NZ by NewSouth Books

Craig Jurisevic is an Australian cardiothoracic and trauma surgeon who, in 1999 worked for the International Medical Corps doing all he could to help the victims of torture and genocide in the most brutal campaign Europe had seen since the Nazi holocaust. Blood on My Hands is his gripping personal account of life as a surgeon working on the front line during the hell of the Kosovo war.

Graduating from medicine in 1990, Craig spent time in conflict ridden areas including Borneo and the Gaza Strip where he witnessed combat style injuries for the first time and realised caring for victims of war was his vocation. Returning to Adelaide in 1993, he continued training and decided on cardiothoracic surgery as his area of specialty, until in 1999 news of Milosevic’s campaign of ethnic cleansing began to filter through the media. He heeded the call for trauma surgeons and left for Albania in April of that year.

Craig was assigned to Kukes Hospital, Albania, and was surgical co-ordinator for all three refugee camps in the area. He became alarmed at the lack of patients and brand new medical equipment in the hospital before realising the hospital was corrupted and being run by a brutal local mafia who charged patients for treatment. Appalled by this Craig desperately tried to publicise the situation and quickly became frustrated at UN inaction after a futile meeting with Kofi Annan. Now a mafia target, Craig was taken in by the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), both for protection and to operate on casualties in a camp closer to the front line.

It became apparent that most of the KLA’s ‘army’ were young and inexperienced recruits from around the world, who had minimal combat experience. Based on his skill as a life-long recreational shooter, and his military experience in Israel, Craig trained the young recruits in the fundamentals of weapons’ safety and use in the short time available. High up in the rugged Mount Pastrik range, a dangerous trek along goat tracks, under attack from Serbian sniper and artillery fire, he set up a primitive operating space in a cave working long days patching horrific wounds, amputating limbs and staunching massive blood loss. He was not only operating in the cave, but having to sleep with the dead bodies as it was too dangerous to leave the cave to bury them.

Craig would lead retrieval teams behind the lines at night to rescue injured civilians from nearby villages. In one heart-breaking instance, Craig finds a mortally wounded woman with her dead son on her lap who begs him to bury her son the next day. What happens next in this desperate situation is a moral and ethical dilemma of the highest order: the injured woman asked him to end her suffering, which he did, with the only means at hand – a Beretta provided to him for his personal safety, by the local KLA commander.

Blood on My Hands: A surgeon at war is an incredibly powerful and moving account from a remarkable man and one that will stay with you long after you have put the book down.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Craig Jurisevic was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1965 and is married with three children. He is a cardiothoracic and trauma surgeon and has worked in many conflict zones. These include Israel and Gaza (1992-93), Albania and Kosovo in (1999), and with the Australian Army in East Timor (2006) and Afghanistan (2008). He is a member of the International Humanitarian Law Committee of the Australian Red Cross. He currently works full-time as a surgeon in Adelaide and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide.

Craig Jurisevic will be in Queenstown as the keynote speaker for the International Trauma Conference, 3-8 July 2010

ENDS

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