Background
Joanne Liu was born in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, to a Chinese immigrant family from Taishan, Guangdong.
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Joanne Liu
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During junior college, she travelled to Mali with Canadian Crossroads International. Liu graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine and completed pediatric specialty training at the Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine. She then completed a sub-specialty in pediatric emergency care at Bellevue Hospital Center of the New York University School of Medicine and an International Master"s in Health Leadership degree at the McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management.
Career
She was elected President during Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance"s International General Assembly in June 2013. Her family ran a Chinese restaurant. When she was thirteen, she became fascinated by Et la Paix dans le monde docteur, a book about the experiences of a physician working with Doctors Without Borders during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
She dreamt of becoming "a doctor without borders" one day.
Liu started her career with Médecins Sans Frontières, in 1996 when she worked with Malian refugees in Mauritania. Since then she has provided support through the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, assisted in controlling a cholera epidemic in Haiti, helped Somali refugees in Kenya, and offered medical assistance in many conflict zones, including Palestine, Central African Republic and Sudan"s Darfur region.
She has also helped to develop one of the first programs to offer comprehensive medical care for survivors of sexual violence in the Republic of the Congo. From 1999 to 2002 Liu was a programs manager at the Paris office of Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance. She then went on to work as the president of the board of directors of Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance in Canada between 2004 and 2009.
She has helped to create and currently co-manages the organization"s telemedicine project, which connects Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance physicians in 150 remote sites with a platform of over 300 medical specialists across the globe.
By communicating through the specialist network, Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance field doctors can receive critical diagnoses and treatment recommendations for their patients within hours. From 2002 to 2013 Liu served as a full-time Pediatric Emergency Physician at Ste-Justine Hospital in Montreal and at the Health Travel Clinic of the Centre hospitalier de l"Université de Montréal. She is also an associate professor at the Université de Montréal.
In October 2013 Liu commenced as International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance), in Geneva.
On September 2, 2014 Liu gave a briefing to the United Nations General Assembly, urging member states to mobilize against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. On 7 October 2015, Liu demanded an independent investigation of the American bombing of the Union for Manufacturing, Science and Finance hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
She denounced the bombing and suggested that it was a war crime.
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Médecins Sans Frontièresearch
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