Joanne Liu

Joanne Liu
Liu at Chatham House in 2015
Native name	廖滿嫦
Born	(1965-11-04) November 4, 1965 Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Citizenship	Canada
Fields	Pediatric medicine
Institutions	Médecins Sans Frontières University of Montreal
Alma mater	McGill University New York University
Known for	International president of Médecins Sans Frontières
Notable awards	National Order of Quebec Time 100

Joanne Liu is a Canadian pediatric doctor, professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, and the current International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). She was elected President during MSF's International General Assembly in June 2013.^[1]

Early life

Dr. Joanne Liu was born in November 04, 1965, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, to a Chinese immigrant Liu family from Taishan, Guangdong. Her family ran a Chinese restaurant called China Garden. Dr Joanne was the fifth child after David, No name (still born child), Anthony and Margaret. When she was thirteen, she became fascinated by Et la Paix dans le monde docteur, a book about the experiences of a physician working with Doctors Without Borders during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. She dreamed of becoming "a doctor without borders" one day.^[2]

Education and training

During junior college, Cegep Champlain St. Lawrence, Quebec City, she travelled to Mali with Canadian Crossroads International.^[1] Liu graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine and completed pediatric specialty training at the Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine. She then completed a sub-specialty in pediatric emergency care at Bellevue Hospital Center of the New York University School of Medicine and an International Master's in Health Leadership degree at the McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management.

Career

Liu started her career with Médecins Sans Frontières, in 1996 when she worked with Malian refugees in Mauritania. Since then she has provided support through the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; assisted in controlling a cholera epidemic in Haiti; helped Somali refugees in Kenya; and offered medical assistance in many conflict zones, including Palestine, Central African Republic and Sudan's Darfur region. She has also helped to develop one of the first programs to offer comprehensive medical care for survivors of sexual violence in the Republic of the Congo.^[3]

From 1999 to 2002, Liu was a programs manager at the Paris office of MSF. She then went on to work as the president of the board of directors of MSF in Canada between 2004 and 2009. She has helped to create and currently co-manages the organization's telemedicine project, which connects MSF physicians in 150 remote sites with a platform of over 300 medical specialists across the globe. By communicating through the specialist network, MSF field doctors can receive critical diagnoses and treatment recommendations for their patients within hours.

From 2002 to 2013, Liu served as a full-time Pediatric Emergency Physician at Ste-Justine Hospital in Montreal and at the Health Travel Clinic of the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal. She is also an associate professor at the Université de Montréal.^[4]

In October 2013, Liu commenced as International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in Geneva.

On September 2, 2014, Liu gave a briefing to the United Nations General Assembly, urging member states to mobilize against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.^[5]

On 7 October 2015, Liu demanded an independent investigation of the American bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.^[6] She denounced the bombing and suggested that it was a war crime.^[7]

References