Aid working: Health employers including the Government have been urged to be more flexible in allowing doctors and nurses to take time out from their jobs to work in developing countries.
Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), the internationally-renowned medical aid agency which has just opened an Irish office, aims to recruit 10 doctors and nurses this year from Ireland for its work in the developing world.
It says that the Department of Health and other employers should be more prepared than they are at present to facilitate medical staff who wish to take sabbaticals.
While some EU states, notably France, actively encourage doctors and nurses wishing to take short-term leave to provide much-needed assistance to aid agencies, no such scheme exists in the Republic.
There is also resistance within the medical professions to overseas work and to taking breaks in the training cycle. Mary O'Brien, a Cork doctor who spent two years in south Dublin working for MSF, says it is often very difficult for a young doctor to be released for overseas aid work.
"It's generally frowned upon in the profession; the only scheme I know that encourages sabbaticals is the GP training scheme in Sligo."
Yet O'Brien says she got more experience working in a basic field camp in Sudan with no beds and no surgery facilities than she would have got at home. "Apart from the range of clinical skills, you pick up a sense of confidence which is central to being a doctor. I feel I can do any job now."
Constantly forced to relocate by the violence and instability in the region, O'Brien's team repeatedly faced medical crises that were ignored in the wider world.
On one occasion, they couldn't get enough shovels to bury victims of leishmaniasis, a treatable tropical disease.
"That night, we listened to the BBC headlines about a single death from bird flu, when we had buried hundreds of people in a forgotten part of the world."
David Curtis, head of MSF's Dublin office, says there has been a dramatic improvement in the recognition given to people who work abroad, but he hopes to raise awareness of the benefits of overseas work within the medical profession in Ireland and among health employers.
Volunteers with MSF are paid about €600-800 a month, along with living and travel expenses. The organisation sends about 3,000 people overseas each year, 40 per cent on first missions, but as Curtis warns it isn't easy to get recruited by MSF, which has a specific medical focus.
"We don't take people straight out of medical school and if you're a nurse, for example, we require you to complete a course in tropical medicine at your own expense."
Like Concern, MSF was born out of the Biafran crisis. Founded in 1971 by a group of French doctors heavily influenced by the idealism of Paris in 1968, it has acquired a reputation for intervening in some of the most difficult situations, from Rwanda to Chechnya. In 1999, it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Valerie Wistreich, a psychotherapist from Cork who worked for MSF in Britain for many years, is chairwoman of the Irish trustees of the organisation. She says the difference between MSF and other aid organisations is that every staff member and volunteer participates in decision making.
"So people who have been in the field for just six months have as much say as anyone else in how the organisation is run. This challenges the old guard and protects against conservatism," she explains.
A number of the big international agencies have opened Irish branches in recent years, largely because of the fundraising possibilities from a booming economy and an expanding Government aid budget. MSF already gets about €1.8 million a year in Government support.
However, Wistreich says private funding is more important to the agency than State support because of the desire of MSF to guard its independence.
MSF is organising an information evening in Cork on July 26th at Triskel Arts Centre at 7.30 pm.
