Editors

Irene de Vries

After working for two years as a medical officer in Saint Francis Hospital in Katete, Zambia, Irene worked for a year in obstetrics and gynaecology at the OLVG West in Amsterdam. ‘After a few months, I realised that this job was not my primary interest – maternal health in a low-resource setting. I knew then that I did not want to pursue a clinical career in the Netherlands. Recently I started working at KIT (Royal Tropical Institute) as advisor in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), with an emphasis on maternal and newborn care. At KIT my team supports governments and NGOs through capacity building, knowledge generation, and strengthening health systems in the area of SRHR. We work together with local partners in LMICs and – through qualitative and quantitative research – evaluate the efficacy of local programmes and interventions aimed at improving care.’

Jeanette van Os

My work in the clinic includes seeing patients as a general practitioner. We also have a small ward for short-term admissions. Surgical and obstetric patients are referred to the community hospital in Monkey Bay, 25 km from our clinic. My work focuses mainly on HIV and consultations that I do in our HIV-clinic, where we treat patients with anti-retrovirals and provide long term follow-up. Additionally, I supervise the other doctors and nurses who do voluntary work in the clinic and residents from the Irish General Practitioner programme who can choose to do an internship in our clinic as part of their residency.’

Tessa Thiadens

People often ask me if I don’t think working in elderly care is rather boring after having worked for Doctors without Borders in conflict zones. The answer is no. Whether it’s in South Sudan or Zoetermeer in the Netherlands, patients consult you with a question every day, and that’s what you deal with. There are actually quite a lot of things comparable in both settings. In both you deal with vulnerable people, work rurally, and lack specialist health care. There are no extensive diagnostic tests available, which requires creativity and flexibility.’

Josine Blanksma

Josine Blanksma recently started working as general practitioner, having graduated from the AIGT/ MD Global Health programme in 2011. After completing her residency programme, she joined three missions for MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) in South-Sudan, India and the DRC with a focus on care for severely malnourished children. During her last mission, she ran a popular blog and featured in a documentary about everyday life as a physician for MSF in Congo. Josine did the first year of her GP training on Texel. In the final year, she volunteered for the Boat Refugee Foundation (Stichting Bootvluchteling) on Lesbos, providing care for migrants. Since 2014 she has been a board member for MSF Netherlands.

Remko Schats

Remko Schats is a general practitioner and researcher. He started his career as global health doctor in 2003 and has been on three international missions since. In Chad he worked for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) as the only doctor in a camp serving 17,000 refugees from Darfur bearing both the physical and mental scars of a prolonged ethnic conflict. Missions for other organisations followed. Remko worked in Ghana in rural hospital and later as a clinical trainer for a post-tsunami malaria control initiative in Aceh, Indonesia. He returned to the Netherlands in 2007 and started training to become a general practitioner. Besides his work as GP, he has continued his efforts in global health as board member for the WHIG, a platform for family medicine and international health. From 2011 to 2014, Remko also carried out malaria vaccine research as part of his PhD programme at the University of Leiden in collaboration with Radboud University Nijmegen. He performed clinical trials immunizing and challenging healthy volunteers with live, deadly malaria parasites via bites of malaria mosquitoes. The outstanding nature of his work was recognized at the annual conference of The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 2013, where he won an award for clinical research.

Rinse Meester

Rinse Meester worked from 2010 to 2012 as global health doctor in the rural North of Congo Brazzaville. Pokola, the little town in the jungle where he was based, has a medical health post offering medical facilities to 30,000 Congolese people. Rinse’s work consisted of diagnosing and treating (tropical) infectious diseases, supervising mother & child care, surgical procedures, conducting ultrasounds, hospital logistics, and out-of-hospital care for HIV patients. He was involved in local public health programmes aiming to prevent common infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV and was on local television and radio to raise awareness of these programmes. Rinse is currently back in the Netherlands, training to become an orthopaedic surgeon, and is in the fifth year of his residency. As a member of the Netherlands Society for International Surgery and the ‘G4’-alliance, he remains committed to marginalized populations.

Erik Staal

Erik Staal knew he wanted to become a global health doctor when he saw the father of his wife Jiska, global health doctor and surgeon himself, working in Sikonge, Sengerema in Tanzania. Erik completed his residency programme in Kennemer Gasthuis Haarlem and left with Jiska for Tanzania in 1998, where he would work for 5 years in Sengerema District Hospital. Here he focussed on surgery, orthopaedics and gynaecology. They returned to the Netherlands in 2003 as a family, and Erik started his specialty training to become a surgeon, first in Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital and later in Radboud UMC. He now works in Slingeland Hospital, Doetinchem, as trauma surgeon with a special interest in head/neck surgery. As a former board member of the foundation behind the training institute for global health doctors (OIGT) and as daily supervisor for the four global health residents during their surgical training, he is still committed to global health. Together with colleagues from Slingeland, Erik organizes two missions to Sengerema Hospital each year and supports local staff by treating and operating complex cases such as patients with neglected trauma, clubfoot and severe osteomyelitis. All participants are volunteers.