An Airdrie doctor who spearheaded a charitable organization in response to the plight of the Rohingya refugee population in Bangladesh recently travelled to Pakistan for 10 days to assist in humanitarian efforts following mass flooding in the country.
Dr. Fozia Alvi, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, began her humanitarian efforts in the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh in 2017. Shortly thereafter, she founded the non-profit organization Humanity Auxilium.
The local physician sought to assist the Muslim minority Rohingya refugee population following an active push by Myanmar’s government to rid themselves of the Rohingya in Rakhine State, displacing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.
“They have been subject to long-standing persecution for almost half a century,” Alvi said of the Rohingya people. “In August 2017, we started seeing images of those people crossing the border of Myanmar entering Bangladesh.”
Never one to shy away from providing much-needed international aid, Alvi and her team began a COVID-19 outreach project in the fall of 2020 in the refugee camps to assist those who were ill during the pandemic, after the first case of the virus was detected among the refugee population in May 2020.
She said it has been the organization’s largest outreach project to date, lasting for almost two years.
“We saw all the rich countries struggling with COVID, so how can the poor people who are not actually welcome in the country where they are living [fare]?” she said.
She added with a team of health-care workers and in partnership with other local non-profit organizations, they went from tent to tent to help treat people who were sick with the virus.
In addition, the team provided thousands of refugees with health-care education.
“Besides that, we are running a women’s mental health project there, especially for the women who are pregnant,” Alvi said of the organization’s continuing work in the camps.
“And for the young girls, because a hundred babies are being born in the largest refugee camp in the world every day. The parents are stressed out. There are no job opportunities.”
According to Alvi, many refugees have been in the camp for more than five years now, adding to the “hopeless situation” in the settlements.
“The international community, it seems they have almost lost interest in the refugees, so, this year, in January, we opened our own independent medical clinic in the camps,” Alvi said.
The clinic, which opened in January of this year, aims to provide general care to the refugee population, in addition to the COVID-19 clinic, and mental health clinic established in the camps.
Since the clinic opened earlier this year, the organization has continued to grow to include a team of volunteer doctors who are focused on serving the educational, health, and relief needs of people from across the world.
“When we are starting this kind of work, we get attached to the other causes and people reach out to us for other causes,” Alvi said of the organization’s growing portfolio of aid recipients.
Humanity Auxilium has since branched out to assist with humanitarian efforts in Yemen, to assist the Yemeni people who are subject to a widespread famine.
“One child is dying in Yemen every two minutes due to preventable causes, due to hunger [or] lack of medical care,” she said, adding the organization hosted a large fundraiser in support of the Yemeni people this year.
The Airdrie doctor said her organization is also providing medical relief efforts for Palestinians who are caught in the crossfire of the ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict, and to the Uyghurs who are in exile in Turkey following their persecution in China.
Most recently, the team has begun an outreach program in Pakistan to assist with health-care needs following the mass flooding that has occurred in the region as a result of heavier-than-usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers after a severe heat wave impacted the region earlier this year.
Part of the relief program involves educating schoolteachers about children’s health, according to Alvi. The team is also working to provide a basic health unit in the region’s schools with a full-time doctor on staff.
“Until now, our medical doctors have been going overseas to do the health screenings,” she said, adding the screenings are akin to medical check-ups in western countries.
“Health care is a privilege that the people in developed countries have,” Alvi remarked. “But people in developing countries, poor countries, they do not have this privilege.”
Alvi and her team are working with a local organization that hosts over 500 schools in Pakistan to help provide health-care education and medical aid to Pakistani children. They are also working to develop a field hospital to aid those who are in dire need of medical assistance.
“I recently came back from Pakistan and I was shocked because I was thinking after seeing Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, I cannot see worse things, but honestly in Pakistan frequently people are in worse conditions,” Alvi said.“Hundreds of children were dying – they were going to die [without] medical care.”
Alvi estimated most of the students in the schools in Pakistan are poor and 30 per cent of them are orphans.
"Most of the children have not seen any doctors, so we are providing them with medical relief,” she said. “It’s so important for ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and help those people.
“[Those people] are literally dependent on our support and sometimes, the small efforts on our part … can change somebody’s life.”
As her tireless efforts have highlighted in recent years, Alvi said her aim is to simply help those who are struggling around the world.
“As a physician, I always believe that every life is precious and important, even one far away from home,” she said, adding part of Humanity Auxilium’s mission is to train doctors locally and internationally who can provide medical aid to minority and vulnerable populations.
“So it’s really important for the Canadian doctors and health-care workers to travel and provide medical aid.”
“My hope is we expand, grow … to help the health-care inequalities in the marginalized communities,” she said. “My hope is that everybody in the world will have health care, because it’s a basic human right.”
Those interested in learning more about Humanity Auxilium are encouraged to visit humanityauxilium.com
