Since I was medical student, I always felt the impulse to work in places where they didn’t have doctors, or where health needs were bigger than the ones I saw at home. 

I spent 15 months in the Amazon jungle and really felt the call, this was the work I wanted to do. MSF was working in my home country of Colombia and I felt they were the ones I could join to fulfil this dream.

I started working with MSF in 2005 and have worked in a variety of projects: South Sudan, on a malaria project in Assam, India, as a medical advisor for an HIV clinic in Yangon, Myanmar, a measles epidemic in Zambia; then Sierra Leone on the current Ebola outbreak. This has been the most amazing one.

South Sudan was the toughest, my first mission, the first time I saw so many children dying, in charge of a huge paediatric hospital, very intense and very hard, but I saw MSF at its best, brining healthcare to people who had nothing.

But nothing compares to this one – hardcore, core MSF work, reaching people, no other organisations doing what we were doing, in a situation where the disease has generated so much fear, about bringing hope to these people so they don’t feel world has forgotten them. It is a very enriching experience.