Working with MSF in Iraq & Haiti

MSF Doctor Javid Abdelmoneim knows all about working under pressure on the frontlines during emergencies and in insecure areas after his stints in Haiti and Iraq.

Javid, a UK-based emergency medicine specialist, visited South Africa this month to speak to medical students at three medical schools about his experiences as part of a speaking tour arranged by MSF SA's field recruitment efforts to the medical faculties at the University of Witwatersrand, University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University. He also did a short video interview with MSF SA.

Javid's involvement with MSF started in his second year at medical school and for him working for MSF was a clear career goal early on. In 2009 he realised that dream when he set off for the Iraq's volatile Basra where he worked as an Emergency Room Doctor at the Jumhuree Hospital, providing advanced life-support, trauma life support and resuscitation training.

In 2010 Javid spent six months working in an MSF emergency room in Haiti after the devastating earthquake. Here his skills as an emergency medicine specialist were tested again seeing a lot of trauma and he was also in charge of internal medicine and intensive care. "We also had to deal with a large number of patients when the cholera outbreak in October reached Port-a-Prince. What it showed me was how quickly and efficiently MSF could react to a new development on a large scale," Javid says.

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Nonprofits & Activism

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• MSF
• Iraq
• Haiti
• earthquake
• conflict