After a voluntary service in a dispensary in Kolkata/India he received training in clinical medicine in German hospitals and then in public health and tropical medicine in Marseille/France and Basel/Switzerland. During this time he co-founded NETZ, a development organization supporting self-help efforts in Bangladesh. For the last 18 years he has been working in health promotion programs in Bangladesh, India, and Kyrgyzstan. His focus has always been on working with remote rural communities, seeking to induce empowerment processes that would enable them to improve health and wellbeing in their villages. Since 2001 he is with the Swiss Red Cross in Kyrgyzstan, where he has led the development of the Community Action for Health programme, a nationwide partnership between Village Health Committees and the governmental health system (www.cah.kg/en).