Mission Accepted (page 2 of 5)

Paige Kilponen

From HealthSmart Magazine

Damien Brown

Name: Damien Brown
From: Eltham, Victoria
Age: 31
Occupation: Doctor
Number of MSF missions: Three
What made you become an MSF field worker? From a very early age I was acutely aware of the divide between the haves and the have-nots, and I’ve always wanted to be involved with work that tried to address that.

Damien Brown Q&A

Best moment? When I was in Angola in 2006, an infant boy was brought into the clinic in a terrible state. He was very malnourished, dehydrated and had a bad chest infection. I didn’t rate his chances too highly. We did everything we could for him and remarkably, he survived the first night and then, slowly, he picked up. A few weeks later we would be greeted in the kids’ ward every morning by a chubby, healthy boy – a beaming little reminder of why we were there.

Worst moment? Telling people “no” or that there’s nothing you can do. To explain to a young Angolan woman with breast cancer (with her husband and three kids sitting, looking at you) that, other than some pain relief, there is not much you can offer her, is gut-wrenching.

How has this experience made you a better doctor? You learn to be self-reliant and to improvise. There is often a lot of uncertainty and educated guesswork, which doesn’t necessarily translate to big-city medicine in Australia, but it has given me patience, flexibility and more patience.

What have you learnt? You realise that you can make a tangible difference to some peoples’ lives and their situation over there, but at the same time you are overwhelmed by the magnitude of their needs. I hold onto the image of that happy, chubby little kid that we snatched from the brink of death, who followed me giggling on the ward round every day and whose mum never stopped beaming once. Current mission South Sudan.Next mission 12-18 months’ medical training in the Australian healthcare system.