“Advocating for refugee health is the catalyst for me to become the physician I want to be.”
Humans of Medicine #39
This publication is in conjunction with the Healthcare for All campaign under the MMI Diversity and Equity Initiative. Information regarding the project can be found at @mmi_social on Instagram.
Refugee /rɛfjʊˈdʒiː/ n. A person forced to flee their country because of violence or persecution.
It started with an opportunity – “Oh, I’m starting a refugee clinic in Serdang.” “Great! What can I do to help?” – and my journey advocating for refugee health unfolded from there. Klinik Amal Muhajir (KAM) was the brainchild of Dr. Siti Noraida, a remarkable philanthropist I had the good fortune to know by being under her tutelage for PBL at one point during my pre-clinical years. I wanted to follow a leader of her calibre. I wanted to learn how advocates like her offer their services to a society that desperately needs their contribution. Having my own clinic someday is an ambition of mine, where I can tailor my services and deliver healthcare to the community the way I envision it to be. Call it serendipity or what you will, but graduation had me fresh out of a job, allowing me time to dedicate myself to help Dr. Aida set up the clinic. What I did was mostly strategic work, developing the workflow policy, coordinating medical volunteers and such.
As KAM grew, I grew along with it, and what was once general knowledge about refugee health evolved into a genuine passion as I learned to appreciate the challenges behind delivering healthcare access to this community. The most prominent being the language barrier. How do I communicate with someone who doesn’t speak any English or Bahasa at all? Having our in-house refugee staff translate back and forth between us and the patients, ironically, presents an added hurdle. Since they are not medically-trained, their understanding of what is to be conveyed is not guaranteed. The second challenge exists in the form of religious constraints – refugee patients who need their husbands’ consent before proceeding with any procedure. And of course, after breaking through all these barriers, there’s still the matter of compliance to worry about.
There are significant challenges, yes. But the clinic is not daunted in the face of these walls impeding our mission. We just have to grow taller than these walls. Besides providing free healthcare to refugees, KAM also does a good job in following up with patients. More recently, we’ve managed to have a psychologist on board with us to address the considerable mental health issues among our refugee patients, and the counselling sessions did help them get better. If a patient’s healthcare needs exceed the clinic’s capabilities, they are referred to a hospital and we will help raise funds to support our patients with the treatment they deserve but which we cannot provide, whatever the cost. In desperate situations, favours are called in, close connections utilised, and the patient is treated pro bono by people we know well.
Interestingly, the clinic has spinned off to have a kitchen as well, staffed by refugee cooks. Now, they can cook and deliver food, they can earn an income to get through the day, they can pay for their own treatment. They have a purpose in life. Essentially, the clinic doesn’t just improve their health status, it also empowers them to develop their own skills and become someone useful in their community. It helps them live a life outside of the label “refugee”, so that their defining identity is no longer relegated to this single word.
A question comes to mind: what can the Malaysian healthcare system do better for refugee health? There is an intricate network of sociopolitical complexities underlying this problem, yet it can be boiled down to a simple answer: our healthcare system does not have enough resources to accommodate refugees on top of being overloaded with our Malaysian patients. Witnessing healthcare professionals burnt-out every day, seeing the lack of facilities from the lack of money, I don’t blame our country for the fact that our healthcare isn’t readily accessible to non-Malaysians. The unfortunate reality is that we are simply unable to. But Malaysia does try to help their refugees receive healthcare, which is more than what can be said for some other countries.
For proponents of the thought “Why should we care? They’re not even our countrymen”, I ask this in return: “How could you not help? If someone, anyone comes to you, stands right in front of you asking for help, are you not going to help them?” These refugees – fleeing their own war-torn country to seek refuge in a foreign land – have lost many loved ones at the same time; they lack job security; they may have atrocious living conditions; they don’t have the ability nor access to acquire whatever they need; they could be going through hell every single day. Yet all the geopolitical issues, all the country regulations and policies and laws are as if a filter over their faces, blurring their features and making it easier for us to see them less as people and more as a burden. But if you were to focus your view and see them plainly as fellow human beings, I think their refugee status would matter less, and you’d care more whether these living, breathing fellow humans are healthy and well. Because at the end of the day, all of us are the same: red blood, same planet, shared existence. On that basis alone, shouldn’t we all be afforded the same dignity, the same respect and the same kindness?
You could say that advocating for refugee health is the catalyst for me to become the physician I want to be, and I leave the clinic feeling more hopeful to be a doctor every time. Delivering treatment and seeing the refugees healthy and relieved of pain and distress is something I can derive happiness from. And after learning the refugees’ stories at the clinic, I’ve gained fulfilment as well as a whole new perspective. It makes me want to be a better person so that other people don’t have to experience that kind of agony, and it fills in the gaps in my life which I was ungrateful for. I feel, in every sense of the word, blessed. Because none of us have ever gone through such horrors, such trauma, but the refugees did. So, the least we could do with our 5 years of medical background is to advocate for these people. Out of the billions of people in the world, not everyone gets to go to medical school, not everyone gets to have the knowledge and skill to alleviate physical as well as mental suffering. So, put this knowledge to good use, offer your skills to make people’s lives better. I believe that’s one of the reasons why we became medical students and why we aspire to be doctors in the first place.
Refugee health is still quite an unexplored territory. When I first started, I didn’t hear a lot of people talking about it, and the talk that was present rarely translated to action. So, if you are interested in this avenue, I implore you to put yourself out there and get involved. The refugee crisis is an immense and highly complex issue, and the efforts of a single person may seem as pointless as dropping a pebble into the sea. But that doesn’t mean that ripples won’t be created. And that’s the idea keeping me going – the belief that if I help someone, they will go on to help more people, elongating this chain of kindness. One pebble at a time, one step at a time, one patient at a time. Eventually, perhaps our cumulative actions will be enough to create a big wave of change.
For more information about Klinik Amal Muhajir, visit them at:
About the author
Interviewed and written by Dani Liu. Dani is a second-year medical student at Monash University Malaysia. Her circadian rhythm is often ruined by her inability to put down a book. Please note that stickers and gifs are her preferred mode of communication.
Consent has been obtained from the interviewee for the purpose of this publication. The author has rewritten the article with permission from the interviewee.
Humans of Medicine is a new initiative under MMI. We tell inspiring stories behind portrait shots of our everyday unsung heroes. Curated by Malaysian medical students from home and abroad.
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