Waheed Arian: supporting health care in conflict zones

Abstract

Waheed Arian is an accident and emergency doctor at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust in the UK and an NHS Innovation Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow and Mentor. But his journey to becoming a doctor was challenging. Born in Kabul in 1983, the first 5 years of his life were spent in hiding from rockets, bombs, and shelling, until his family migrated to Pakistan for their safety. For the next 3 months their home would be the Babu refugee camp near the city of Peshawar. At the camp, Arian became malnourished and contracted malaria and tuberculosis. “Although refugee camps are safe from bombs, there is so much malnourishment, the conditions are ripe for disease”, he says. The care he received made an impact: “The more I was going back and forth to the doctor to be weighed and find out how my progression was, the more inquisitive I became. I saw I was getting healed…that medicine was the best way for me, maybe, in the future, through which I could help people as well.”