A Cardiologist trained in Egypt and my native Yemen, I am applying to study for the master's degree in public health at XXXX University (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) because my extended family and I have all chosen XXXX as our home, and we are most happy with our choice. A permanent resident of the USA since 2014, I have spent the past two years since I arrived in America working towards independent financial security, building a business along with other family members here in XXXX. Now that our business enterprise is flourishing, I can afford to return to my education and re-train here in America for further professional advancement.
I hope to be admitted to XXXX University’s MPH Program based on the fact that I am a medical doctor trained in my native Yemen, a country that is in desperate need of assistance from the international medical community since it is one of the poorest countries in the world with the least developed public health infrastructure and beset by political instability and war off and on again for decades.
Now 34 years old, when I was 12 years old, my family fled violence in our part of Yemen and sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. I returned to Yemen for medical school because Yemenis are not eligible to attend medical school in Saudi Arabia. I received my permanent residency in the USA in April of 2014. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to complete high school in Saudi Arabia. This gave my education an international flavor, exposing me to young people from various countries and cultures, the children of guest workers like my parents. During this period in Saudi Arabia, my English improved rapidly since it is my chosen international language. I studied it intensively as part of my academic curriculum and practiced it with other young people from places like the Philippines, where Saudi Arabia’s workers are drawn.
After finishing medical school, I completed my first internship in Internal Medicine in Yemen (08-07/10-07), followed by training in Surgery (11-07/01-08), Pediatrics (02-08/04/08), and Obstetrics & Gynecology (05-08/07-08) followed by a full year of residency in Internal Medicine from (10-08/10-09). In 2009, I moved to Egypt to advance my career in medicine, and by 2013 I was studying for a master's degree in Cardiology. First, I fulfilled a nine-month residency assignment in Internal Medicine with the Cairo University Faculty of Medicine in Cairo and then went on to serve the same teaching university as a resident Cardiologist for three years, from July 2010 through July 2013. One of the primary reasons I chose Cardiology as my medical specialty was because heart disease took my grandfather and potentially threatened my entire family.
After a brief return to Saudi Arabia, I moved to the USA, establishing a permanent home. I now hope to distinguish myself as a very hard-working graduate student in your MPH program at XXXX University. I am pleased that I will bring to your program extensive medical experience serving not only in Yemen but also in Egypt, where the practice of medicine is significantly more developed but still lags far behind the way medicine is practiced in America.
Successive waves of civil war have gradually destroyed the entire health system in Yemen. Poverty is so severe that many have limited access to drinking water, and most of the population suffers from food insecurity. Illiteracy rates are remarkably high, especially for women and girls, which makes everything worse. Sanitation is abysmal, and diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, much less a problem in other parts of the Middle East, spread rapidly in Yemen. Maternal, neonatal, infant, and child mortality are among the highest globally, along with neighbors like Somalia and South Sudan. I hope I can help to improve the level of health in my country and throughout the region by participating in studies and scientific research, particularly that related to strengthening Yemen’s national health care system. I keenly look forward to learning how to combat epidemics and infectious diseases successfully, reducing morbidity – especially among children, along with maternal, neonatal, and infant mortality rates.
My long-term goal is to work as a public health professional down the road, always paying special attention to Yemen and the Middle East and North Africa more flying back and forth for years between this magical land of my birth afflicted with such suffering. My newly adopted home, America, to which we look for assistance and hope. I want to contribute to the control of sexually transmitted diseases, significantly HIV/AIDS, while we radically improve the quality of health services and increase their utilization. Central to my initiative will be the development of emergency obstetric care services. I would enjoy teaching Public Health at some point at Aden University, where I studied medicine in Yemen.
I want to study at the forefront at XXXX and learn everything I can about diseases' causes and ways to prevent them. My studies in Public Health will inspire and enable me to achieve a professional stature that will be effective at working alongside the government – in whatever form it may exist at the time or who it may be – in a search for sustainable solutions to problems in a non-existent to dysfunctional health system resulting from poverty, war, regime change, corruption, widespread religious, tribal, and political violence. My central dream is to work with or out of the WHO’s local office in Yemen.
I dearly love the commitment of my time to medicine daily morning meetings in the hospital, the newly admitted cases each day, follow-ups, scientific research, and especially everything having to do with cardiology. I have participated in various public health awareness campaigns in Yemen and Egypt. Among the highlights have been the polio vaccinations in my city, Aden, along with several awareness programs for malaria and breast cancer. In both countries, I have provided blood pressure screening and offered information to those at risk for hypertension and diabetes.
Dengue fever is again becoming a problem in Yemen. The WHO has drawn up a 5-year strategic plan to scale up preparedness and response activities for dengue fever prevention and control. I am studying this plan closely and could not find it more exciting, strengthening surveillance and early warning systems in high-risk areas, implementing additional campaigns to control the vector, training physicians on clinical management of dengue, and intensifying health education among the population. TB is also a significant problem in Yemen, the fourth cause of death; 2000- 2500 people die yearly. Tourists suffer from Typhoid, and Malaria is all too common. I want to focus on Yemen because it is my country, home, and people, and when we fled to Saudi Arabia, I already had my heart set on becoming a doctor. Because I grew up in an area where Malaria was one of the leading causes of death, I read a lot about malaria, educating my friends and neighbors about how to avoid getting infected. Participating at scientific conferences in internal medicine and cardiology has been the highlight of my life so far, especially at The Annual Congress of the Egyptian Society of Cardiology. I have learned from traveling between several countries how to deal with people from diverse cultures, races, and social classes. I live to help foster community capability, individual competence and capacity, economic resilience, and social inclusion.
I have been close to the misery of people's lives in some of the poorest villages in the world to vaccinate children, and I have helped numerous people who I have found near death in public spaces. One of my hobbies is writing, I like to author short stories, and I wrote about five short stories and participated in the annual university competition, all of which took first place.
Thank you for considering my application to Public Health at XXXX University.
MPH Epidemiology and Biostatistics Personal Purpose