In a report titled “Shot in the hip, doctor Jemilah Mahmood sewed herself up and helped save others”, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) described how the gutsy doctor had heeded her son and husband’s advice to start the humanitarian organisation in 1999.
Since then, she and her medical volunteers have served in war-torn regions like Kosovo and Iraq, and also disaster zones such as the tsunami-hit Aceh in Sumatra and cyclone-hit Fiji.
The report stated how Jemilah nearly lost her life and took a bullet in Iraq in 2003. This happened when their convoy of ambulances carrying medical supplies to children’s hospitals came under fire.
The bullet exited her colleague’s body and lodged in her hip. Two people died in the attack and two doctors were injured.
Jemilah, who is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, stitched up her wound and went on to do a C-section for a woman in labour, propping up her injured hip on a box. She only got to remove the bullet five weeks later.
Being the humble person that she is, Jemilah refused to think much of her heroics, saying the humanitarians who were injured and died that day were the real heroes.
“Calling me a hero shows disrespect for those who died,” she told SMH.
“We can’t fight our destiny. There must be a reason why I am here. If I give up, I wouldn’t be doing justice to those who gave their lives.”
That was also the day, Jemilah realised white flags or ambulances no longer protected humanitarians and peacekeepers from attack.
The interview with the Australian daily was published on Saturday in conjunction with World Humanitarian Day on Aug 18.
It was 14 years ago to the day, when bombs destroyed the Canal Hotel in Baghdad killing 35 people, including senior international humanitarians. In October that year, a car bomb attack destroyed the headquarters of the International Red Cross in that city too.
Jemilah is now under secretary-general for partnerships at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), overseeing 190 national societies with 17 million volunteers.
She lamented however on how much harder it was to keep humanitarians safe in conflict zones.
“The humanitarian sector is no longer sacrosanct and international humanitarian law is no longer upheld. We are under attack when we shouldn’t be,” she was quoted as saying by SMH.
According to the daily, since the start of 2017, 29 Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers have died in the line of duty.
In Syria, 60 volunteers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have been killed since the start of the conflict, along with eight from the Palestine Red Crescent.
Family support
The newspaper traced Jemilah’s early life to when her parents used to host poor and needy people in their home.
Her mother bolstered the independent streak in her daughter and this continued when Jemilah got married. As a result of the encouragement she received from her son and husband, she began Mercy as there was no such organisation in Malaysia at the time.
Jemilah spoke about how initially, it was difficult to get sponsors as nobody believed a Malaysian humanitarian body could be serious about its work.
Things changed however, when CNN filmed her and her medical team amid the debris and devastation in Aceh following the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami. Mercy was one of the first teams to reach the zone and thanks to the global coverage, her phone began ringing with offers of help.
Jemilah said in each place she visited, Mercy worked with the local community as equal partners to get them to help themselves.
“International agencies often pay too little attention to local groups, by just often swarming in and ignoring the local talents”, she was quoted as saying.
Jemilah’s work with Mercy prepared her for later jobs, including as chief of the World Humanitarian Summit secretariat at the United Nations and as one of 16 members appointed by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon to the advisory group of the Central Emergency Response Fund.