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KWAN KEW LAI is a Harvard Medical faculty physician, an infectious disease physician, disaster relief medical volunteer who has volunteered her medical services all over the world.
In 2006, after volunteering after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, she left her position as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and worked part-time as a clinician, while dedicating her time to humanitarian work.
Lai volunteered in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, and Malawi and provided earthquake relief in Haiti, Nepal, drought and famine relief in Kenya and the Somalian border, hurricane relief in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the gulf coast. She worked with refugees of the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Syria in Greece and in Moria Camp in the Greek Island of Lesvos, and the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar at the greatest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in war-torn Libya and Yemen.
She treated Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the greatest Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Lai blogged extensively about her experiences, https://www.blogger.com/profile/13152349017377143296
During the peak of the COVID pandemic, she volunteered at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York, and on St. Croix of the US Virgin Islands.
Her book debut, Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak was published in 2018, http://bit.ly/2NxOvg7.
NPR interviewed her about her Ebola experience, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/02/12/385528882/the-ebola-diaries-trying-to-heal-patients-you-cant-touch
Her second book Into Africa, and Out of Academia: A Doctor's Memoir Just comes out in October 2020, https://bit.ly/2IRoEDc. Originally from Penang, Malaysia, Lai came to the United States after receiving a scholarship to attend Wellesley. “Without that open door I would not have gone on to become a doctor,” Lai wrote in her Doctors Without Borders bio, https://blogs.msf.org/bloggers/kwan-kew-lai.
She is the lead author of many professional publications and presentations in her field and a contributor to the Infectious Disease Society Science Speaks blog posts, https://bit.ly/3joaUMx
Lai has received numerous awards for her work, which include being a three-time recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award. In 2017, Wellesley College awarded her the Distinguished Alumna Award and in 2019, Chicago Medical School, the Distinguished Alumni Service Award.
She paints when she is inspired and exhibits her artwork at the Belmont Art Gallery. She is also a marathon runner.
Her forthcoming book, The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly will be out in October, 2022.
https://www.vineleavespress.com/the-girl-who-taught-herself-to-fly-by-kwan-kew-lai.html?fbclid=IwAR1A8-pZPqIDLSe2_jEZK1jF0AM0pF6FpZMR-mDmTzK-xpyF3x8mkCLcuuY
kwankewlai.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kwankewlai.authorpage/
Twitter: @Kwankew
Photo credit: Charles FitzGibbon
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