There were other crises. Hesselink had just taken off at sunset from the small airstrip at Nimne, not far from Duar, when he got a radio call from Seaman asking him to return and pick up a woman having complications in childbirth. "I told her it was crazy. It was too late. We would crash," says Hesselink. "She made me do it anyway." After picking up the woman and Seaman in Nimne, Hesselink flew in the dark to Ler, where there was better equipment. As the plane approached the field, the Nuer lit fires along the runway. After being treated, the woman gave birth to twins. When Hesselink flew back to Nimne with the newborns, he was greeted by cheering crowds.

By late 1995, it looked as though the epidemic in southern Sudan was beginning to wane. Seaman and the MSF staff had treated about 19,000 patients, principally by administering daily injections of Pentostam. Keeping track of up to 1,400 patients at a time, most of whom were unable to read, required the creation of a massive card-filing system and the training of a competent local staff. Family members were taught to fill syringes to lines marked with tape and then to administer the doses themselves. "Jill Seaman has treated more cases of kala-azar than anyone else in the world," says Dr. Robert Davidson, senior lecturer in infectious and tropical diseases at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. "She has personally dealt with more than 10,000 cases."

Once treated, a patient is likely to remain immune to the disease. But the price of stopping the epidemic, which amounted to more than $1 million a year poured in by MSF-Holland, has been high in human terms as well. Of 70 Nuer and Dinka nurses trained by Seaman and the other MSF doctors, more than 75% have come down with kala-azar themselves. Five lost children to the disease.

With the crisis beginning to come under control, relief agencies headquartered in Nairobi began to rethink their role in Sudan, favoring a hands-off approach aimed at getting the Sudanese to develop their own medical capabilities. Seaman was criticized in some quarters for being too hands-on, for doing too much. Hesselink says Seaman faced a mini-revolt in 1995-96 when some colleagues insisted that she see patients only during normal working hours or risk being sent home on the next plane. An MSF bureaucrat who replaced Hesselink as MSF's country director briefly banished Seaman to languish in Nairobi, before the bureaucrat was herself recalled to Holland. McHarg, Seaman's current boss, appreciates her special talents but also sees the need to go beyond emergency medicine. "If we pull out of Sudan tomorrow," she says, "we'd like to know that we are leaving something that lasts."