Dr. Deborah Khoo was treating a 12-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to her calf in Singapore one evening. When she and her health staff inquired about the incident, they were shocked by her explanation.
Through an speaker, they learned that the child had been shot by her younger brother, who had access to an AK-47 assault weapons.
This is just one of the cases that the 35-year-old encountered while on a three-month mission in Afghanistan under the Medecins Sans Frontieres ( MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders.
The Kunduz Trauma Centre, a healthcare facility operated by MSF, served as the anesthesiologist at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) between April and June 2024. In northwest Afghanistan, Kunduz is a town that is accessible by road from Kabul, the capital, in about seven days.  ,
People who have suffered injury, such as from traffic injuries or problems and conflicts, are treated at the facility. The service reopened in 2021 after being destroyed in a 2015 attack by the United States.  ,
The MSF is a nonprofit, independent organization founded in France in 1971 that provides emergency medical care to those who have been harmed by conflict, diseases, natural disasters, and lack of access to care. It has presence in more than 70 nations, including Thailand, Mexico, France, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Mexico.
Dr. Khoo spent three months living and working at the center, where he treated traumatic injuries to people like the 12-year-old female and many others, in a location where safe health care is scarce.
DRIVEN BY A NEED TO HELP OTHERS ,
Dr. Khoo told CNA Women that she had always been drawn to health charitable work, so it was little wonder to her home when she applied to volunteering with MSF in 2023.