Joaquín Sanz Gadea was born in Teruel in 1930. After graduating from the University of Salamanca with a degree in Medicine and Surgery, he went on to study Tropical Medicine at the Sorbonne and Gynaecology and Surgery at the Complutense in Madrid. He has been medical director of the Buta Hospital in the eastern province of the Congo, where he began working in 1961 after being selected by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the "Operation Congo" campaign. He worked in this country for fourteen years, and during his vacations in Spain he made numerous arrangements aimed at obtaining plasma and medical and surgical supplies for area hospitals. Sanz Gadea has also performed other medical tasks of a marked humanitarian nature, as a leprologist in the Maleke Leprosarium at the Stanleyville Hospital and as the head of the Surgery Unit at the Onatra Hospital of Matadi (Congo). Sanz Gadea has also been Surgeon General of the Sahara and has written such books as "What Every Saharan Should Know About Trachoma" (1975). He has been a member of the Spanish Academy of Surgical Medicine since 1978 and is honorary consultant to the Fernando el Católico Institution. Among his many honours, he is the recipient of the Zaragoza Delegation´s "San Jorge" Award (1968) and the "Dag Hammarsjoeld" International Award for humanitarian achievement.