You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (November 2025) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
Xavier Emmanuelli (23 August 1938 – 16 November 2025) was a French doctor and politician. He was the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières.[1][2]
Life and career
Xavier Emmanuelli was born to Corsican parents. His father, a schoolteacher and later a doctor, was from Zalana, and his mother, also a schoolteacher, was from Propriano. Members of the Resistance during World War II, they hid Jewish children and were recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations." He has two sisters, Anne Marie Emmanuelli-Orecchioni, a university professor (faculty of pharmacy), and Claire Emmanuelli-Zara, a gynecologist,[3] and a brother, Jean-Marc Emmanuelli, a gynecologist and surgeon, president of the Association of Corsican Doctors, founded by their father after World War II with island doctors exiled in Paris.[4]
During his student years, he hesitated between philosophy and medicine. A communist activist, he was a university friend of Bernard Kouchner,[5] with whom he participated in the anti-fascist security service,[5] then in an expedition to Jordan in September 1970.[6] This anti-colonialist was an occasional cartoonist for Hara-Kiri.[3] Along with Rony Brauman, he was one of the many members of the Cochin group of friends who had a "strong propensity" to "experience activism as an opportunity to go" primarily "beat up fascists",[5] against whom he "frequently got into fistfights."[7][8]
Emmanuelli ultimately opted for medicine, graduating in 1967 and then specializing in neurology and then in anesthesiology and intensive care in 1976. He was a general practitioner for the coal mining company at the Freyming-Merlebach Mining Hospital from 1972 to 1975, then a doctor in the merchant navy for two years.[9] Meanwhile, he joined the leadership of Doctors Without Borders, where he reconnected with Rony Brauman, whom he had known during his activist years as a student at Cochin Hospital. He twice refused Brauman's requests for missions when he applied, in 1976 and 1978.[10] He then trained in emergency medicine and joined the SAMU (Emergency Medical Service) under the direction of his mentor, Professor Pierre Huguenard, one of the founders of the SAMU.[3] He has three children who also studied medicine.
In 1993, Emmanuelli co-founded the SAMU Social (Emergency Medical Service) of the city of Paris with Dominique Versini.[citation needed] Since 1997, he has returned to practicing medicine and was head of the national network "Psychological Suffering and Precariousness," created in April 1998.[11]
Between 1995 and 1997, Emmanuelli served as Secretary of State for Emergency Humanitarian Action in the first and second governments of Alain Juppé.[12]
Emmanuelli died in Paris on 16 November 2025, at the age of 87, after a "probable cardiac" collapse, according to the announcement by Samu social.[13][14][12]
References
- ^ Mort de Xavier Emmanuelli, l'un des pères du Samu Social et de Médecins Sans Frontières (in French)
- ^ "Xavier Emmanuelli, fondateur du Samusocial, est mort à l'âge de 87 ans". Le Monde.
- ^ a b c Pierre-Edouard Deldique, interview de Xavier Emmanuelli pour l'émission Idées sur RFI, 29 juillet 2012
- ^ Christophe Deloire (27 June 2003). "Les Corses qui comptent". Le Point (in French). No. 1606. p. 44.
- ^ a b c « Entrer, rester en humanitaire : des fondateurs de MSF aux membres actuels des ONG médicales françaises », Johanna Siméant-Germanos, Revue française de science politique, 2001 [1]
- ^ « MSF, une vie de révoltes », Jean-Francis Pécresse, 20 décembre 2001 [2]
- ^ "Chapitre 1. 1968-1976 Le « coup » des fondateurs"" par Pascal Dauvin et Johanna Siméant-Germanos, dans "Le travail humanitaire", en 2002 [3]
- ^ « Entrer, rester en humanitaire : des fondateurs de MSF aux membres actuels des ONG médicales françaises », Johanna Siméant-Germanos, Revue française de science politique, 2001 [4]
- ^ Bruno Frappat (6 June 2012). "Le casse-pied nécessaire". La Croix. Archived from the original on 8 October 2018. Retrieved 19 November 2025.
- ^ Médecins Sans Frontières La biographie, Anne Vallaeys, 2004, éditions Médecins sans frontières
- ^ "Xavier Emmanuelli lance un réseau d'aide psy aux SDF". liberation.fr. 6 October 1999.
- ^ a b "Xavier Emmanuelli, fondateur du Samusocial, est mort à l'âge de 87 ans". Le Monde. 16 November 2025. Retrieved 16 November 2025.
- ^ Xavier Emmanuelli, fondateur du Samu social, est décédé
- ^ "Xavier Emmanuelli, fondateur du Samu social, est mort à l'âge de 87 ans, annonce l'organisation". Franceinfo (in French). 16 November 2025. Retrieved 16 November 2025.
