Dr. Annum Jaffer, Lake Houston Area (Humble) Rotary Global Grant recipient, 2017-2018, sends us an email update regarding her activities on her Pediatric Residency at New York University in New York City. She is applying to continue her training "to work in low-resource settings around the world." Dr. Jaffer is also planning on providing pediatric care in rural villages in Pakistan for two months in the Spring of 2022.
Hi Bill and all my wonderful Rotary friends,
I hope this is finding you, your family, and your friends safe, healthy, and happy.
I am a little over a month into the last year of my Pediatric Residency at NYU in New York City and wanted to give you all an update.
I have just finished turning in my applications for Pediatric Global Health fellowships, which essentially are programs that will train me to work in low-resource settings around the world. I plan to focus on the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia regions of the world to provide direct healthcare to children. Because of the contributions you made to my education at London School of Economics while attaining my MSc in Human Rights.
I will also be able to combine my work in pediatrics with child rights work in order to bridge the gap between poor access to quality primary and secondary education, and low poor health outcomes.
The other options I have besides a fellowship are applying for jobs in global health directly without doing further training, and lastly moving to London to work in primary care there. When I was in London about 2-3 years ago, I absolutely fell in love with the city and my Rotary family there. I still long to move back there and hope to be approved to work in the UK National Health Service. Lastly, I am planning to go to Pakistan in Spring 2022 for 2 months to provide Pediatric care in rural villages in the northern parts of the country.
The delta variant Covid cases in NYC have started to rise but fortunately children are not as heavily affected by it as adults so I am not seeing as many cases of Covid in the hospital. Otherwise, NYC has been getting closer to it’s normal lively and fun nature this summer, although with more caution than pre-Covid.
I hope all of you are able to get vaccinated and can start to enjoy more normalcy as the year goes on. I hope we were all able to find gratitude for the little things in life through this process, and I wish all of you a peaceful and beautiful year.
Dr. Annum Jaffer
Lake Houston Area (Humble) Rotary Global Grant recipient, 2017-2018