'I belong where people need me'

Dr Wedad Abood Yaser's enthusiasm for volunteering in conflict zones is infectious. Despite the risk she takes each time, Wedad's love for serving humanity shines through and her words come across as sincere and honest, just like the work she does.
"It's an addiction.A good one," says the doctor whose last mission was as the team leader of the medical mission for a surgical and emergency room in Yemen in March 2015 while working for Medicines Sans Frontrier (MSF), Doctors Without Borders.
She is already bustling to take up another mission. "A normal job is not for me. I belong to places where people need me," Wedad, who has specialised in nutrition, tells Khaleej Times, explaining why she chose to put her life at risk by deciding to work in a disaster area.
"It's a cycle in life. Get going, be strong and move on, but deep inside, I'm torn to pieces." It was after her graduation seven years ago that she thought of volunteering. "I was trying to figure out the real meaning of life," she says.
Dr Wedad chanced upon an advertisement by Doctors Without Borders who were looking for volunteers. She had to travel to Yemen for an initial meeting but while all her family opposed the idea, her father accompanied her on the trip.
"I was due to travel in two days and take a journey to a place where I had never been before. I didn't know where I was going, but I was ready."
On her first night away from home, Wedad wondered if she had taken the right decision. "Soon
after, reality hit me when we had to deal with 20 mass casualties which included kids as well. Sadly, we couldn't save some of them."
By 2011, Wedad had relocated to south Yemen to deal with the ongoing violence. "As a healthcare provider, I had to deal with harsh psychological and physical conditions. Every morning, I thank God for being alive.it's like been born again."
Between 2012 and 2014, Wedad moved to Libya to work for a rehabilitation programme. In bet-ween missions, volunteer doctors are given rest periods to recover from the pressures of their job and asked whenever they are ready to volunteer again.
"Among the most heartbreaking cases I have seen during my work are children who have been raped, and raped women who are pregnant but denied an abortion just because the country's laws do not allow it."
Other cases she sees are polytrauma, children with no limbs from bombing, and pelvis fractures, among others.
The last mission undertaken by Wedad, in 2015, was meant to be for six weeks only, but it stretched to nine months. She returned to the UAE last August after dealing with ER casualties.
Flashbacks still haunt her. "I wonder what I could have done to save someone." Dinner time chats with colleagues are one way of getting rid of the stress, she says
- asmaalizain@khaleejtimes.com
- @asmaalizain

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