A pediatric emergency physician from Montreal will take the reins of the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders this October, where one of her priorities will be making medications and vaccines more affordable.
Dr. Joanne Liu has been elected the new international president of Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders after starting with the non-governmental organization in 1996.
She is the second Canadian to be elected president of the group, which has more than 30,000 medical professionals working to deliver emergency aid in over 60 countries.
Liu told CTV's Canada AM that one of her goals is to improve the accessibility of medications and vaccines for patients “in the field."
"There are issues in terms of having drugs at an unaffordable price," she said. "And as I often say, if it's not an affordable solution, it's not a solution."
She said MSF is working to achieve lower prices for vaccines and medications intended to treat HIV, TB and non-transmittable diseases.
Liu, who has worked in a number of disaster and conflict zones including Haiti, Indonesia and Sudan, said she'd also like to draw attention to the ongoing crisis in Syria.
"The main issue in Syria is access, access for humanitarian aid organizations towards the population," she said, noting the millions of Syrian refugees who've fled the country. "We have to scale up the offer of aid."
She added that the ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the "forgotten conflict" in Somalia also need attention and assistance.
Liu said the public also needs to be aware that medical caregivers are often targeted in conflict zones.
"This is one thing I would like, that somehow around the world people will get concerned with what's going on and we build a community of concern with respect to international humanitarian law," she said.
"I always say now it's the indifference that kills patients in the field and different populations. We have to break our indifference towards the suffering of people elsewhere."
