"Every day I meet people whose compassion and determination to help the most vulnerable brings tears to my eyes and forces me to see the hope that lives on in these devastated places." ~ Dr Lisa
images courtesy Craig Searle
Sudan is a country in northern Africa which is currently being devastated by a civil war. An estimated 12,000 people have been treated in one hospital alone for trauma injuries in the past 12 months – all civilians and all caught in the crossfire. This war is marked by the two main warring factions showing total disregard for the civilian population, health care workers and medical facilities. It is a dangerous place to live and work, and a Tasmanian GP working with the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, is working in a hospital between the frontlines.
Doctor Lisa can trace her journey with MSF to the moment in Grade 10 that her French teacher told her about the humanitarian organisation. Acutely aware of what a privileged life she led in such a peaceful, democratic country as Australia, Lisa decided to devote her life to MSF. After graduating as dux at her high school and completing grade 12 at Launceston College, she did her medical training at the University of Tasmania. Work experience postings in Thailand and Philippines, followed by a volunteer stint in Tanzania, gave her some idea of the medical challenges faced in other countries. With two years’ experience at the Launceston General Hospital under her belt, including post-graduate work in obstetrics, she applied to join MSF and received her first posting in 2010.
Chaman is a town in Pakistan on the Afghanistan border, and for nine months Lisa was the supervising obstetrics doctor in a 24-hour maternity hospital. Over the following 15 years, she has been posted to the Democratic Republic of Congo (three times), Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Haiti (three times) and now Sudan. Along the way she has become fluent in French, Swahili and Spanish.
In the Congo, she ran mobile clinics in remote villages, trained local health care workers and also ran sexual violence centres. This country has the unenviable reputation of having the highest rates of sexual assault of any country in the world.
Working in Kharkiv, the second biggest city in Ukraine, at the beginning of the current conflict, Lisa was leading mobile health clinics in the underground subway stations. Her team slept in the stations with the displaced locals and then walked through the tunnels to the next station. She spent most of her three months in Ukraine underground, feeling the vibrations and hearing the muffled booms of daily explosions from the surface.
Lisa has visited Haiti three times since the devastating earthquake that destroyed large parts of the country in 2010. It is a known phenomenon that wherever there are natural disasters or wars, the incidence of sexual violence increases dramatically. Lisa established a sexual and gender-based violence clinic in the capital Port au Prince and has been back twice to monitor its progress.
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None of the places MSF work are safe. In Pakistan, bombs were detonated regularly; in the Congo Lisa had to deal with a critical incident when a member of her team was kidnapped; in Ethiopia, her team had to evacuate due to the intensity of the fighting; and Haiti is a lawless and anarchic country ruled by armed gangs. In her current work in Khartoum, Sudan, she deals with the reality of almost daily shelling and the difficulty of providing healthcare in an active warzone.
When asked about her drive to continue in such difficult and dangerous work, she replied, “The patients we save, the lives we improve, the smiles on the faces of mothers when they can take their children home from hospital – these are the things that keep me going. As well as our locally recruited colleagues – every day I meet people whose compassion and determination to help the most vulnerable brings tears to my eyes and forces me to see the hope that lives on in these devastated places.”
When she is back home in Tasmania, Lisa lives in the beautiful Huon Valley and works part-time as a GP and, but you would be wrong to think that her time at home is a chance for the easy life. Her other passion is for the Tasmanian forests. “I care passionately about Tasmania’s natural environment and in all my travels I’ve never found a place that matched its beauty,” she says.
Working for the Bob Brown Foundation, Lisa is a leading environmental activist, often participating in peaceful protests to protect and raise awareness about our forests and endangered species. Such is her commitment, this work has seen her arrested several times.
A gifted cook, Lisa regularly caters for large groups at events such as the Tarkine Bioblitz and she has even written a vegan cookbook, Feeding the Resistance.
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Lisa is a rare individual. As comfortable sitting in the canopy of a forest giant for a week, cooking in an improvised kitchen for 150 people, or negotiating with armed militia for access to injured civilians, this warrior for mankind, Dr Lisa Searle, is my daughter.
Writing this article has forced me to examine how I feel about how she spends her life and the work she does, and I have condensed it down to the following: I admire her and I am proud of what she does. I am frightened for her. And at the end of the day, I believe the world is a better place for having her in it.
Craig Searle is an eighth-generation Tasmanian who proudly hails from convict stock. A teacher for 31 years, he retired in 2011, having spent the last part of his career as an outdoor education specialist. He has a passion for wilderness, remote places and lighthouses and has spent two winters on Maatsuyker Island. He lives in Scottsdale with Debbie, his wife and partner in a lifetime of adventures.
