Working as a Public Health professional in the humanitarian sector

Lucy Reynolds holds a Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a RedR Member. Here she shares some of her experiences of working in the relief sector, in particular her work in China following the 2008 Sicuan earthquake. 

Background and experience

Lucy has been working in the aid sector since the mid-1990s; she has worked with health care delivery and epidemiological assessments in several natural disasters (floods in Bangladesh, the Aceh tsunami and the earthquake soon after further east in Sumatra) as well as on other humanitarian aid missions and on HIV/AIDS programmes.

Since starting out in the sector, Lucy has undertaken a number of different RedR training courses and workshops – covering areas such as refugees, environmental health and needs assessment - and in 2003 she became a RedR Member.

Lucy feels that the training she has received from RedR has time and time again proved to be indispensable in the field and that the courses she has attended also strengthen her CV for humanitarian aid missions.
 

Assisting survivors of the China 2008 earthquake


Following the Sichuan earthquake on 12 May 2008, Lucy was part of a team of consultant surgeons and other emergency medical staff mobilized by RedR to fly out to China for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Lucy has several years experience working in the public health sector in China, and she was a natural choice to help facilitate the group.

The British team were asked to assist two hospitals. The first was in Mianyang Hospital, very close to the epicentre of the earthquake, where many local people were sleeping in tents, too afraid to stay in their homes. Here two Chinese trauma surgeons and a plastic surgeon were carrying out operations in the operating theatre, and the British accident and emergency doctor and nurse joined local colleagues in triage and stabilisation of new patients, referring cases to the surgical team as needed.

The second hospital was in the provincial capital, Chengdu, where complex trauma cases had been centralised. The team met with hospital management and medical counterparts to consult over patients and then started carrying out operations. The British NHS consultants were asked to give lectures on their clinical specialities, and interesting and animated debates developed between the Chinese and British surgeons about the different technical possibilities newly developed in this field.

Lucy feels that it was great to be part of this international cooperation and to have been able to help some of those injured in the earthquake. She was also pleased to have been able to see the Chinese disaster relief response close up: as a humanitarian aid professional she was impressed by the local rescue and relief efforts, as well as the Chinese ability to undertake damage limitation in view of imminent disasters through large-scale coordination.
 

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