Anh’s Brush with Fame: Aug 15

This week on Anh’s Brush with Fame the subject is Associate Professor Munjed Al Muderis.

Anh invites ground-breaking surgeon Associate Professor Munjed Al Muderis to share his gruelling journey from Saddam’s Iraq to an outback detention centre in Australia, and how he has gone on to make his name in revolutionary robotic prosthetics.

Munjed had a privileged upbringing in Baghdad, but always had a sense that he wanted to help the victims of war that he saw around him. Early in his medical career, he was confronted with a brutal ultimatum by members of Saddam’s regime, and he made the snap decision to flea his homeland or else face dire consequences.

After a gruelling journey at the hands of unscrupulous people smugglers, his overcrowded boat was intercepted off Christmas Island, where Munjed would experience one moment of great kindness that taught him to take any available opportunity to help others. He was detained at Curtin Detention Centre in the Australian outback, where he was considered a trouble-maker for trying to improve conditions in the camp, before being granted release and refugee status one year later.

Working to have his Iraqi medical qualifications recognised, Munjed found a position at a rural Victorian hospital and devoted all his time to his dream of becoming an orthopaedic surgeon. He has been instrumental in developing robotic prosthetics and integrative surgery in the hope of improving quality of life for amputees.

Anh admires Munjed’s self-belief and optimism and hopes to capture a sense of that in his portrait. Will Munjed like it?

8pm Wednesday on ABC.