NOVEMBER 2011

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photo by david reed Wayne State has a few dozen Chaldeans in its medical school. doctors in the house Chaldeans are flooding the medical field By Joyce Wiswell Nena Auraha knew what her future held from the age of 5. “I had the coolest pediatrician ever and I wanted to be like him,” she said. “I was also really close with my grandma, who had Alzheimer’s. I realized I wanted to help.” Now 26, Auraha is a fourth-year medical student at Wayne State University. She’s doing rotations at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak and plans to specialize in internal medicine. When he was 5, Ramy Mansour moved to Michigan with his family from Baghdad. He sometimes tagged along with his physician father, Faiz, who needed to redo his residency to become certified in the United States. “The hospital was never a scary place for me — it was where they help people,” Ramy Mansour said. “I was intrigued by it.” Mansour, 25, is a third-year student at Michigan State and doing his clinical studies at Henry Ramy Mansour plans to brush up on his Arabic. Nick Yeldo is doing his residency at Harvard. Nadine Roumaya plans to become an obstetrician. Ford Wyandotte Hospital. He’s thinking of specializing in ear, nose and throat medicine. Nicholas Yeldo, a senior resident at Harvard Medical School, said he also felt the calling as a child. “Even at a young age, I spent my time volunteering for the underserved,” he said. Auraha, Mansour and Yeldo are among the dozens — some say hundreds — of Chaldeans who are attending medical school. It’s a fairly new trend in a community where joining the family business was always the norm. “It’s very encouraging,” said Nahid Eylas, MD, the president of the Chaldean American Association of Health Professionals (CAAHP). “We have a shortage of physicians and health professionals because our community is growing very fast with all the immigrants and refugees.” CAAHP’s Project Bismutha is a volunteer group of physicians who provide medical help to the community’s uninsured. “We need the new generation to join us,” Elyas said. “The future is for them to continue to support this project.” The future is just what these students are focused on. Nadine Roumaya just graduated from the American University of the Caribbean after a twoyear residency at St. John Providence Hospital in Southfield and is now doing her four-year residency 22 CHALDEAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2011
a long road at St. John’s Detroit location. She plans to become an OB/GYN. “It’s a really happy field and delivering babies is really exciting,” said the 26-year-old, who had several Chaldeans as classmates in the Caribbean. “I like obstetrics more than pediatrics because you get to do some surgical procedures.” Yeldo, 31, is currently in Harvard’s Anesthesia Residency Program at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston, where he said he believes he’s the only Chaldean — “If not, I’d love to meet them.” Becoming a doctor is all about others, he said. “For me, it’s a lot about helping people overcome their fear of illness and giving them hope and confidence that someone out there will fight for them and do everything in their power to provide the best care possible,” Yeldo said. “Many times we cannot offer a cure and many times we don’t have the answer. But we can always give love and support.” All in the Family The medical field seems to be coming a new family business for many Chaldeans. Roumaya’s sister, Justine, is a second-year dental student at the University of Puerto Rico. In addition to his physician father, Mansour has a mother, sister, and sister-inlaw who are all dentists. “When I tell people that they think I was forced into medicine, but really, they never said a word,” Mansour said of his parents. “They just wanted me to do what I wanted.” Jessica Kado insists that was the case for her, too, though it’s easy to imagine that she was raised with some expectations. After all, eight of the nine Kado kids are doctors or plan to become one. The youngest daughter Nicole, a college freshman, hasn’t made up her mind yet. “We could use a lawyer,” joked her mother, Julie. “We were just encouraged to get an education but we were never directed towards anything but our own interests,” said Jessica Kado, 28, who is a dermatologist and married to an anesthesiologist. The Kados seem to have virtually every specialty covered. Rachel Kado-Acker is a pediatrician allergist and married to an orthopedic. Herman is a cardiologist married to a rheumatologist, and Karl Jr.’s specialty is radiology. Julie Ann is in her fourth-year and plans to go into ophthalmology or anesthesiology. Kimberly and Stephanie are in medical school or pre-med. The family has become a bit of a dynasty at Wayne State, which has a few dozen Chaldean medical students. Julie and Karl Kado have contributed financially to Wayne State helping to fund, among other things, the new Kado Family Clinical Skills Center. The two are former teachers who “like every other Chaldean shifted to business,” said Julie. “As teachers we always emphasized education over everything else. The standards were set very high since they were little so they knew we expected them to do well. For instance, there was no TV except on Fridays,” Julie Kado said. “We lived in a very small house in Oak Park so we DOCTORS continued on page 24 Iraqi-born physicians face many hurdles By Weam Namou For a foreign doctor, it’s a long way to become a physician again in the United States. Just ask Alaa Toma, a medical doctor from Iraq who has been in the United States for three years. Doctors in any healthcare specialties have to first complete appropriate training and licensure, such as the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination), which consists of three steps. “It has taken anywhere from two to five years for the doctors I’ve spoken to to complete the long process,” said Toma, 35, who has been studying online for the USMLE and will take his first exam within five months or so. “But I’m determined as hell to pursue it, even if it takes years. I like my career.” A number of doctors do not even make it. Those who do finish the exams successfully then have to enter a residency program. But Toma said that that does not mean their work to re-establish themselves in the field is done. “The medical profession has become more and more competitive, with a lot of international doctors coming here from India, Korea and other countries,” he said. Despite the grueling process, Toma said he likes studying because it updates his knowledge about the medical field. “I studied medicine in the 1990s and since I graduated in 2000 there have been a lot of differences, many innovations that took place.” Toma has an older and younger brother, Ghazwan and Marwan. Both doctors, Marwan lives and practices in Australia and Ghazwan is in Michigan, having moved here after getting his master’s through a Fulbright Scholarship in New York. While it seems like careers in the medical field run in the family, Toma said that’s not the case at all. “My parents came from rural areas,” he said. “They didn’t even complete their high school education. As a child, my father worked on the farm in Iraq and here, most of his side of the family is in the store business.” Excelling in school is what got the Toma brothers into medical school, where they felt they naturally fit in. “Of course I liked the scientific part of the work, but when we started going out to hospitals to visit patients, I found this was my favorite aspect,” he said. “I liked listening to peoples’ personal problems and being able to comfort them, to give them hope. I think this is a crucial part of the job.” Given the time spans that Toma worked in Iraq, during the sanctions and the 2003 war, he had a lot of comforting to do. The widespread corruption, poverty of the Iraqi citizens and lack of hospital equipment were horrifying. “There were a lot of malnourished and starving children,” he said. “Many people couldn’t eat any meat, not even fish or eggs.” Toma’s salary as a new graduate doctor during the sanctions was 3,000 dinars — $1 a month. After the Oil for Food program was established in 1995, the situation improved a bit and Toma’s salary went up to $10 per month. When the 2003 war began, Iraq “went from poverty to violence,” he said. “There was no government, no authority, and the situation with the insurgents grew worse and worse,” he said. Toma told the story of how once while serving in the military as a doctor, there were so many dead bodies that they began burying them in the hospital’s garden. “At one point, there were several homes approximately 100 yards from where I lived that were hit by American military rockets because it was suspected that Saddam was hiding in these residences,” he said. “The homes and the families in them were completely destroyed.” Toma, as a doctor and a Christian, was constantly threatened. “Back then, insurgents’ main targets were politicians and doctors,” he said. Others with his education and religious background were kidnapped, beaten and killed as his neighborhood and workplace became more and more violent. The majority of his family by then had left Iraq and given the risks and dangers surrounding his daily life, he finally decided to seek asylum in the United States through the UN Refugee Program. “The situation in Iraq was very sad,” recalled Toma. “But still, it was a rich experience which benefited me as a human being and a doctor and which I was able to live through due to my faith in God.” Toma left Iraq in October of 2006 and lived in Jordan for two years, where he worked for a year and a half as a general practitioner in a nursing home. Since his arrival in the United States in September 2008, he feels optimistic about the new culture and is grateful for everyone who has helped him transition, for instance Neil Jaddou, MD, who allows Toma to assist him at his clinics in Troy and Sterling Heights. Part of the requirements for international doctors, especially those from the eastern world, is to gain U.S. experience in hospitals or clinics in order to better understand the western system. “I like it here,” Toma said. “It helps that I am surrounded by a large family and good people and while I can’t predict the future, I pray that I can move forward with my career.” NOVEMBER 2011 CHALDEAN NEWS 23
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NOVEMBER 2011

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