A backpack floats in brown water. The ward is a tent. The air is forty degrees. And still, patients keep coming. We open the year with Dr Lakshmi Jain of Médecins Sans Frontières, who takes us from NHS corridors to a flooded field hospital in South Sudan, where logistics, infection control and compassion collide in the harshest conditions. With planes grounded and supplies tight, she shows how medicine adapts when the plan dissolves, and how a team holds the line when a hospital turns into a lake.

We trace Lakshmi’s journey into humanitarian medicine: the early pull of travel and justice, the discipline of mastering HIV and TB in the UK, and a humbling first mission in Kenya amid strikes and neglected TB wards. She shares the nuts and bolts of fieldwork—running out of supplies, living in tents, waking at dawn, mentoring local clinicians—and the mindset shift from textbook certainty to on-the-ground pragmatism. The story of a child with a snakebite, waiting seven days for a runway to dry, becomes a lesson in making the most of a hard ceiling of care without losing heart.

Lakshmi also brings us to Bihar, India, where advanced HIV intersects with visceral leishmaniasis and devastating stigma. Here, science meets dignity: undetectable equals untransmissible becomes a lifeline, carried by mental health teams and quiet conversations at the bedside. We talk about hope, family, and what people everywhere want—safety, health and a future—along with clear advice for aspiring humanitarians across roles: doctors, nurses, logisticians, epidemiologists and communicators.

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Links:

https://www.msf.org/

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DHlZjZCCAQk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakshmi-jain-3a5b32366/

https://scienceportal.msf.org/api/assets/7846/download/14086

For more information visit Lakshmi's episode page here - https://www.noordinarymonday.com/ep021-lakshmi-jain-msf-doctor

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