Doctors Under Fire Discussion

Saleyha Ahsan

It was during her non-medic role of Medical Support Officer in Bosnia that Saleyha was inspired and encouraged by her military medical commanders to apply for medicine. As a result, she found herself at medical school in Dundee and never looked back.

After leaving the army, Saleyha continued to travel into hostile environments, but this time as a filmmaker and freelance journalist. She has worked and written for the BBC, Channel 4 News, the Guardian and online news, Latitude News.

Saleyha is currently nervously awaiting her results for her Masters in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, from Essex University. She undertook this program in order to support her work with Medical Justice as a volunteer doctor, assessing victims of torture who are seeking asylum.

In addition to this, she is currently on the Diploma in Conflict and Catastrophe Medicine and has a BSc in Chemistry, while also working as a Staff Grade in A and E in London. As well as studying, she is also in the editing stage of her latest documentary about frontline medicine in Libya, having just returned from six months out there working as a volunteer medic and filming Libyan volunteer doctors working during the battle for Bani Walid.

Hamish De Bretton Gordon

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is Managing Director Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defence at Avon Protection, the recognized global market leader in respiratory protection system technology specializing primarily in Military, Law Enforcement, Firefighting, and Industrial.

Hamish served 23 years in the British Army, which included service as Commanding Officer of the UK CBRN Regiment. Additionally, he was part of NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion. His operational deployments included the 1st Gulf War, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Niall Aye Maung

Niall joined the Army as a doctor in 2005 and went on to complete Commando and military parachute training. He has planned and provided medical support to UK military operations around the world, usually supporting isolated teams with few resources and prolonged evacuation times.

Trained as a GP, most of his work focusses around pre-hospital and CBRN medicine.

Luca Carenzo

Luca is an emergency critical care physician and disaster medicine doctor currently working in both Prehospital and hospital settings. Luca is currently a medical consultant for AirMedical S.r.l which provides critical care and aerial retrieval work worldwide. He also works voluntarily work for the international charity Doctors without Borders (MSF) as an emergency doctor and anesthesiologist. Previously, he has been deployed in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake and in Yemen* following the recent civil war.

Luca completed his training in Anaesthesia and Critical Care in June 2016 at the Università del Piemonte Orientale in Novara. Interestingly, this was also where he completed his medical studies graduating in 2010. In 2015 he was selected for an observership with London’s Air Ambulance. Additionally, in 2014 he was one of the winners of the European Society for Intensive Care infectious diseases fellowship, which was held at Charite Hospital in Berlin, Germany. During his medical training, Luca attended an elective rotation at the Trauma Center of Rabin Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel. At present, he is a researcher in emergency and disaster medicine at the Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine (CRIMEDIM) at Piemont university.

Luca has experience in mass gatherings planning and response and medical management of mass casualties.