Overview
- The Samu social announced his death on Sunday in Paris after a malaise described as probably cardiac, with the organization’s Jacques Carles confirming the circumstances to AFP.
- A physician by training, he co‑founded Médecins Sans Frontières in 1971, created the Samu social de Paris in 1993, and launched Samu social international in 1998.
- The outreach system he built now operates in more than a dozen locations from Cairo to Lima, Bucharest to Dakar, serving adults without shelter, children in street situations, refugees and displaced people.
- President Emmanuel Macron hailed him as “a great humanist,” joining a broad wave of tributes from national and local leaders as well as humanitarian peers.
- He served as Secretary of State for emergency humanitarian action from 1995 to 1997 and later chaired France’s housing committee for the disadvantaged through 2015, resigning from the Paris Samu social in 2011 over funding and administrative constraints.