Jean-Pierre Willem, born May 24, 1938 in Sedan (Ardennes, France), is a medical doctor, surgeon and anthropologist. He joined Médecins sans frontières in 1977. A proponent of bringing traditional medicines closer to conventional medicine, he founded the international NGO Médecins aux pieds nus and the Faculté Libre de Médecines Naturelles et d’Ethnomédecines (FLMNE).

Known as France’s youngest Resistance fighter, Jean-Pierre Willem has led numerous humanitarian missions to help victims of disaster and conflict since 1959 in Algeria. In 1964, he was one of the first to take an interest in the synthesis of traditional and Western medicine, working with Doctor Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné (Gabon), where he met Ernesto Guevara. He worked as a cooperating doctor in Rwanda (1966-1967), as a doctor for orphans and refugees in Vietnam and Cambodia (1968-1975), and as head doctor on the Transgabonais construction site (1976-1977), with Laotian refugees in the Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia) (1977), with famine victims in Zaire (1979) and at the indigent hospital in Kinshasa (1981), surgeon in Lebanon (1976, 1978, 1983), on the Iran-Iraq front (1982) and in Somalia (1984).

Founder of the Faculté Libre de Médecines Naturelles et d’Ethnomédecines (FLMNE) (1986), of the Médecins aux pieds nus (MAPN) association (1987)[8], and of the Aromalia company, he is also President of the Association Biologique Internationale[9], which he founded with André Gernez, and which is also known by the English name OUI.

Alongside his humanitarian and sporting activities, Willem is an expert in aromatherapy, essential oils and natural antibiotics. From 2000 to 2007, he was editor-in-chief of the fortnightly Pratiques de santé and, from September 2007, consulting editor of the now-defunct magazine Révélations Santé. In July 2010, he told Gérard Klein on Europe 1 that he had delivered Dany Boon’s baby.