Living on the edge of a humanitarian crisis comes with an huge emotional toll. Death surrounds you while day after day, more and more ask for your help. That is the life of a Doctors without Borders.
Maybe there are some children dying but there are hundreds that are there and will need your help.
Médecins Sans Frontières medical professionals don’t have time to mourn, instead they get on with the job of helping those in desperate need. They cope by saving more and more lives. Currently, Médecins Sans Frontières is in more than 60 countries around the world.
From war-torn countries to those hit with epidemics, malnutrition, natural disasters and a lack of healthcare, Médecins Sans Frontières doctors, nurses, midwives, anaesthesiologists, surgeons, logisticians, administrators and other professionals deliver emergency aid on a daily basis.
Theodora Fetsi was born on the island of Lefkada, Greece. The scenes she would see on TV, at the time that kids in Biafra and Ethiopia were dying of hunger and malnutrition, sealed her professional path – she would become a nurse.
“I remember I was thinking – when I grow up, I want to go and help those people, especially the children. My dream was to become a doctor. I ended up in nursing, another profession that could provide medical aid to people in need. As long as I remember, that’s what I wanted to do,” Theodora Fetsi tells Neos Kosmos.
Only one poster, announcing that the newly opened Médecins Sans Frontières office in Athens was looking for a nurse for a field work in Zambia, was a trigger for Theodora to exchange Athenian hospitals for the refugee camps of Africa.
“It was also when the Médecins Sans Frontières Greece office had started, in 1991, with the assistant and the support of the Paris office. It was still a small office, they didn’t have enough people. It was the first time they were recruiting someone – so I was the first nurse recruited from Médecins Sans Frontières Greece to go to a mission – me, a doctor and a logistician, we were the first three expatriates in fact,” she recalls.
On the first mission to Zambia, Theodora Fetsi, at the age of 23, provided support for Zambian hospitals by training the national staff, organising the structure in the hospital and donating medical material.
Neither humanitarian nor financial resources were available in the country whose economy at that point was dysfunctional.
And, most important of all, Theodora Fetsi and other medical professionals were training local nurses and doctors on how to do nursing procedures better and safer.
Dealing with people for whom basic needs are a privilege must have changed her.
“I know when people would visit us from the office and when I returned to Greece, the common observation was that I had changed a lot. I became more independent, self-conscious, self-trusted. I wasn’t travelling before that, I didn’t know what to expect. But that experience made me stronger and made me realise that I could do several things.”
After the six-month mission in Zambia was completed, Theodora found herself working at the Onasseio Cardiaosurgical Centre in Athens. The only reason for that, she says, was to try to see if she could work in a different surrounding, to make sure that the field work with Médecins Sans Frontières was genuinely what she wanted to do. It didn’t take long to find the answer.
“One day I received a call from the Médecins Sans Frontières office – there was a position in Malawi. ‘You either take it now, or it’s gone’, they told me. I just quit from the hospital, and I was on the way to my new mission in the next few days,” Theodora says proudly about the start of her two-year long mission in Malawi.
During the Mozambique Civil War, their neighbour Malawi housed around 1.2 million Mozambican refugees between 1985 and 1986. Theodora’s position there was, with no surprise, in a refugee camp. From being a nurse, her devotion to Médecins Sans Frontières took her to the next step – to the position of a project coordinator.
Once the refugees went back to Mozambique, the mission was closed.
Today, Theodora remembers the mission in Malawi as the time she was introduced to some of the toughest moments of her profession. Dealing with death, and even more heart- rending, the death of kids.
“I was working within a feeding centre with malnourished children. The problem is that those kids are coming to us very late sometimes, and they are already severely sick, so they die. This for me at the beginning was something I could not really face – there was a time when I couldn’t do anything. I had a project coordinator come to me and say – ‘either you come to your senses or I’ll send you back, because the way you are you cannot help anybody’.”
“And yes, maybe there are some children dying but there are hundreds that are there and will need your help. And that’s when I realised that I had to put a distance to my emotional well being and to what I was feeling, to be able to do my job. With experience I realised it was the best option, as I was protecting myself from burning out or having emotional issues. After that, I was able to help them – I was not focusing on how I feel, as children were dying around me,” Theodora remembers.
Later, Theodora went back to Malawi once more – this time to help the HIV project that was about to start.
“After one year in Malawi, the second time, I was in the phase where I wanted to see what was happening in other organisations – I worked for Oxfam, on promoting hygienic habits in the Philippines, for seven months. But I couldn’t get Médecins Sans Frontières out of me. So I came back,” she says with a laugh.
All the humanitarian field work Theodora went through during more than 20 years experience with Médecins Sans Frontières are what made her. The missions are what gave her a clearer picture of herself. Meeting new people, learning from them, getting to know their cultures, to exchange experiences, keeping the friendships alive over the years.
“While on the mission, most of the time you have to do things alone, you have to take initiative, find solutions to problems. All these values and principles I didn’t know I had – Médecins Sans Frontières helped me learn a lot about myself.”
You begin to understand her selflessness when you realise how dangerous her job was. Nurse Theodora Fetsi was never afraid for her own well being.
“We know there is support; we know we prepare people the best we can before they go on a mission. I was never afraid for what could happen to me.”
Since 2009, Theodora lives in Sydney with her partner and two children. After working in operations in the Médecins Sans Frontières office in Athens, and looking after several missions, Theodora decided to settle down with her family. She applied for the position of HR officer that was open at Médecins Sans Frontières Australia.
“We took ourselves, our kids, three suitcases and came to Australia. It turned out to be a very good experience, worth the risk that we took. We like the job, the schools, everything here,” Theodora says.
Theodora is now responsible for the management of the medical and paramedical pool and for the emergency response team that Médecins Sans Frontières Australia has for the region.
Now it’s her job to send people on missions, those willing to work within a big international humanitarian team, willing to share their skills and to dedicate their time to support medical humanitarian aid that Médecins Sans Frontières provides all over the world. As a pool manager and experienced field worker, she tells us that Médecins Sans Frontières is always looking for ‘competent, motivated and enthusiastic people’.
“People can support Médecins Sans Frontières in many ways – going on missions, donating as much as they can, volunteering. With the help of people, we can help others in precarious and difficult situations. Also, our field workers will be able to reach further and countries that are in need, and to intervene in emergencies. Otherwise, without the support from people and field workers we can not exist and work,” Theodora says.
In 2012, Médecins Sans Frontières treated 1.6 million patients for malaria, 276,000 children for malnutrition, 185,000 births were assisted, and 284,000 HIV patients were put on ARV (Antiretroviral) treatment according to Médecins Sans Frontières International Activity Report 2012.
Nearly 90 per cent of the Médecins Sans Frontières operating funds rely on the general public, while 10 per cent comes from international agencies and governments.
To find out more about working with or donating to Médecins Sans Frontières, visit the website www.msf.org.au