Medical Capacity-building in Kurdistan, Iraq – A Unique International Health Experience

This past spring, the authors traveled to Iraq on a medical-capacity-building project in Iraqi Kurdistan, providing surgical and anesthesia training to residents and attendings at teaching hospitals in Duhok. For Dr. Jha, this was his second trip to the region, and he brought Dr. Lee, a CA-3 resident from their institution. The team was headed by Dr. Gazi Zibari, a transplant surgeon from the Willis Knighton Transplant Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, and consisted of volunteers from myriad surgical specialties, including trauma surgery, otolaryngology and neurosurgery, as well as emergency medicine, nephrology, gynecologic oncology, podiatry and optometry. For more than two decades, Dr. Zibari has led a dedicated team of clinicians to assist with medical capacity-building in his home region of Kurdistan. Throughout the years, he has recognized the need for safe anesthesia for the increasingly complex surgeries being undertaken; thus, we were invited to join the team. Dr. Jha was...