Darkata7

Howdy!

As a medical student who has active research in both global health disparities and trauma/critical care management, thank you so much for reaching out like this! Myself, and the groups I collaborate consider y'all to be absolute rockstars. I have two questions:

1)Is there any way for healthcare professional students to become involved with MSF?

2)One of the concerns I have come across in the global health field is how things have become increasingly complex: especially in regards to the number of active NGOs, the ever evolving role of host nations in requesting/denying assistance, and the view of some individuals regarding the increasingly blurred lines between a desire to perform beneficent humanitarian assistance and an attitude that some have described as neo-colonialistic. Yet, clearly there is a need for humanitarian efforts globally.

In this increasingly complex environment, what does MSF see as its role in the future of humanitarian intervention and what are some of the challenges it is currently trying to address?

Thanks for being who you are and doing what you do, and if I run into either of you overseas the first beer will be on me.

Hi, medical student involved in both global health and surgery research. I have actually looked a bit into this subject. /u/drmike0099 has some good points, but that is not 100% of the story.

While surgery may seem easy to do (at least in a physcial sense), it is actually surprisingly physically taxing. You are engaged ultra-fine motor control for hours on end. The way that surgery is structured in a setting like that of your average MSF field team is, due to the high number injury/trauma nature of patient presentations you are pretty much doing surgery all day every day. Sometimes 12-16 hours a day. Every single day. Of ultra-fine motor control that if you slip even a little bit, has the potential to kill, or at best permenently disable your patient.

This is a big reason why a lot of foreign aid teams, when they try to recruit surgeons, state "You have to be in shape".

All in all, there is a big disparity in regards for the needs of surgeons (and anesthesiologists) in the global health efforts and why, as Dr. Paul Farmer has stated, surgery is the "neglected stepchild" of global health.