The doctor from Millaa Millaa making medicine better
Richard Dinnen - Queensland Editor |
Queensland doctor Lachlan McIver has been to more than 100 countries, changing the way the world practices medicine.
He set out from Millaa Millaa, in the lush hill country of far north Queensland, on an adventurous career in what he calls ‘wild medicine’, delivering medical care in ‘wild’ circumstances like war zones, natural disasters, and remote areas.
He’s operated on axe wounds to the head, delivered a baby in the middle of a cyclone, treating severely ill patients with limited equipment and supplies.
“Having to take out a little boy’s appendix in the maternity ward on Thursday Island by head-torch because the operating theatre was severely damaged in a cyclone.
“We didn’t see that coming, but we knew what we had to do when the time came” he said.
Lachlan worked for the World Health Organisation in Geneva, and then moved to a role as Tropical Diseases & Planetary Health Advisor at Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
He’s also the founder of the non-profit organisation, Rocketship Pacific Ltd, which works to improve health in Pacific island nations.
In his just published memoir, Life and Death Decisions, Lachlan reveals the adventure and personal cost of flying in to disaster areas or war zones as emergency responders.
“A series of fairly tumultuous events occurred, and I spiralled into a horrible pit of suicidal depression.
“Then I got despatched on a mission to the civil war zone in South Sudan. I was scribbling in my notebook in my mud hut, by head-torch, swatting the mosquitoes.”
Those scribblings have become a gripping memoir that casts light on some of medicine’s most confounding issues, the looming disaster that is drug resistant bacteria and the health effects of climate change.
“In Vanuatu, in 2015, after cyclone Pam, the worst to hit the country in living memory, at times I was the only doctor in the emergency department in the country’s main hospital.
“In the projects that I visit, from Mozambique to Madagascar, we regularly and frequently have to anticipate and respond to extreme events like floods and tropical storms that are getting worse over time.”
Lachlan has travelled the world more than most, but he’s still deeply involved in Australian rural medicine, regularly practising in regional hospitals and health centres.
“I’m forever committed to trying to improve the access to health care for people in rural areas, both in Australia and around the world.
“I’m helping to develop and implement health projects in some of the wildest, most remote and dangerous parts of the world.”
And does he recommend a career in medicine?
“It’s not for everyone, but it is possible, and it is awesome.
“If young people have the drive and they’ve got the guts, it is possible to find a way to do this amazing kind of work.
“I’m just a kid from Millaa Millaa. If I can do it, there’s no reason why anyone else can’t.”
