Fazila Lalani, Humanitarian Outreach in India

India is the world's second most populous country, and as a result gets to both experience the positives and negatives of such rapid growth in people. On the plus side, there is the opportunity for the economy to increase rapidly, and businesses to use the potential labor force to bolster the economy and create a certain level of wealth. We often hear of India being one of the fastest developing countries, with many companies moving things like technology support their to save money, which also provide millions of people with work. However, as it is with any large population, trying to create an infrastructure in health for example, tat suits everyone, can be difficult, and varies wildly across the social divide.

Dr Fazila Lalani is one of many medically trained professionals who has strived to use their medical experience to help improve medical services in some of the poorest regions of India. Whilst in the major cities, the medical treatment is generally considered to be of a good level, despite the strain placed on it by the large and ever-growing population, much of the country doesn't have the resources of expert advice needed to improve their services. As a result, millions of Indian people fail to get the medical treatment they need to fight curable diseases and illnesses, and can cause premature deaths and life crippling injuries in the long run.

For Dr Fazila Lalani, using her Western medical education to help developing countries raise their own medical standards is hugely rewarding work. She has visited India three times on voluntary medical assistant programs, and is currently the visiting Professor for the Mission Hospital Emergency Med Residency Program, Durgapur. Here in this role, she has used her education and experience to help teach medical residences how to improve the general services in the medical centers there, and make the most out of the limited resources they have.

For Fazila Lalani, it is a hugely rewarding and important experience to go to countries such as India, Haiti and other third world or developing countries to try and improve the lives of others. With great academic knowledge and education comes responsibility, and how we choose to use that will determine the future of societies and mankind. Fazila Lalani believes that we can all find our altruistic inner urges to help make the world around s a better place, and in doing so improve mankind and humanities goals for everyone.

Fazila Lalani- Using Medical Experience to Help Those Most in Need

Many professionals find excellent ways in which they utilise their skills and education to help those in most in need. In the medical world, there are many opportunities for medical professionals to travel abroad to some of the most deprived places in desperate need of medical attention, and help certain charities and organizations give them aid. It can be a hugely rewarding experience, and one which can change the lives of others and those helping them. For Dr Fazila Lalani, being able to use her medical training and experience has been a great way for her to give something back to humanitarian causes, and cultivate her altruism.
 

Being able to help others and build networks in charity and medical communities can open up a world of opportunity for those with a strong desire to contribute to humanitarian causes. It can be a way to meet people and organizations, and find ways towards a fulfilling career using valuable skills and knowledge to help those most in need.
 

Fazila Lalani has had numerous opportunities to go abroad and help humanitarian cause. Last year she visited India three times to teach emergency medicine residents basic medical practices that could go on to save lives and cause comfort for patients. She also went to Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world today, to start working on a rural medical clinic and help bring their practices up to an efficient level to save lives and treat illnesses.
 

Next year, Fazila Lalani plans to go to Tanzania for 6 months as a volunteer consultant at a hospital in Dar Es Salaam to improve their ER and hospital system, and get it up to modern standards for better treatments. She also does local volunteer work in her home-town, and is on a national team that helps mentoring for pre-health high school and college students. Fazila Lalani MD also set up local health fairs and is hosting a health professionals networking and career development meeting in April in Manhattan.
 

For Fazila Lalani, being able to help others and contribute to wider humanitarian causes such as developing medical centers in deprived regions, is truly rewarding work and helps imbue life with a sense of purpose. Most in medicine enter for the altruistic reasons that bonds the community, and being able to extent that altruism further afield is a great way to put ones skills and experience into practice.

Fazila Lalani MD And The Mission Hospital, Durgapur, India

As Fazila Lalani, MD, reveals, despite having lived, studied, and worked in New York City for virtually all of her life, she still makes regular visits to India to join up with her family and to work as a Visiting Professor at the Mission Hospital Emergency Medical Residency Program in Durgapur, approximately 3 hours from Calcutta. As she says, since she was young, every time she or her family went to India their friends would give them a suitcase full of traditional Indian clothing to donate to the less-fortunate living in the United States. Unfortunately, there is not a Salvation Army for Indian clothes in the US, so Fazila Lalani and her family would instead distribute the clothing to the poor living in the slums of Mumbai.

As a result of this, Fazila Lalani approached the Mother Teresa Orphanage for TB and leprosy patients next to the Mission Hospital in Durgapur to arrange giving clothing and other donations. She quickly became friends with the residents over a further three visits, and asked Dr Abdul 'Rufi' Sherwani, Chief Resident at the hospital to accompany her to the Orphanage. What happened next was to have a profound impression on Dr Lalani. Dr Sherwani was taken aback by the appearance of an elderly lady working at the Orphanage. After a moment questioning one of the Sisters, Dr Sherwani was certain. The woman had been brought from the orphanage to the hospital six months previously with no apparent signs of life. Despite this, Dr Sherwani had immediately given her Advanced Cardiac Life Support.

As Dr Fazila Lalani explains, one of the few negative sides of being an ER doctor is that they never see the patient after he or she has left the emergency room. To see this particular Sister serving food to the orphans without any visible signs of neurological deficiency will remain with her for the rest of her life, and, she believes, provides ample testimony to the importance of the residency training provided in a small rural town 8,000 miles away from New York City.

Currently Assistant Professor (Emergency Medicine) at the Northwell-Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Dr. Fazila Lalani graduated magna cum laude from Siena College with a Bachelor Of Arts In Biology awarded on a combined BA/MD Honors Program. The next step on her very rapid rise on the professional ladder was to gain a Doctor of Medicine qualification from Albany Medical College, Albany, New York. She then undertook her Internal Medicine Internship from the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, before joining the Jacobi Medical Center on an Emergency Medicine Residency. She followed her year at Jacobi by working at the York Hospital in York, Pennsylvania – again on an Emergency Medicine Residency.