Frontline (Redmond Tony); Harpercollins, 2022

Tony Redmond has deployed to wars, refugee crises, air crashes, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes, and disease outbreaks for over thirty years. Featuring tales of hope and redemption, as well as untold suffering and mismanagement, this raw, honest account could only have been written by someone who has for decades performed incredible feats of altruism.

Frontline takes the reader from the wards of Manchester’s Nightingale hospital to Kosovo, from Sierra Leone’s Ebola outbreak to Lockerbie, and from Haiti to the Philippines. We find its author risking life and limb to help those affected by events beyond their control.

But while humanitarian work and medicine require an innate goodness, not all those involved have benign motives. And saving lives requires difficult choices: between the desire to relieve suffering and the need to weigh up the context. Too often medical aid is found wanting, doing more harm than good.

How are life-or-death choices made in the heat of the moment? What are the consequences of your action, or inaction? Is it better at times to do nothing? How do you live with yourself if you want to help but can’t?

This is a frank account of the personal toll — physical, mental and social — emergency medicine levies on those who choose to do it. But ultimately, Frontline offers a tale of optimism, persistence and triumph over adversity, speaking to the resilience and fortitude of those who help and those whose lives they save.

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