Starting from the Bottom
Alaa Mosllam, 22, lives in Maghazi Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip with nine of her family members in a single house. In secondary school, Alaa managed to achieve a cumulative mark of 98.3%. Despite high marks that would have allowed her to be accepted to study any specialty she wished, Alla’s household financial situation was challenging, and the chances of her being able to go to university were slight. Her father is a private sector Engineer, but without a steady job and fixed income. Alaa’s sisters were hardly managing their own tuition fees through loans from the universities.
Alaa has just completed her fifth year in Surgery and Medicine at the Islamic University in Gaza (IUG) with the assistance of an Al Fakhoora Dynamic Futures scholarship. Alaa says “If I did not have the scholarship, I would not have been able to complete my education in Medicine or even delay it for one or two years. I would not have been able to achieve what I have in the last five years. The scholarship has really helped me a lot to progress in my studies.”
By the end of her fifth year, Alaa had an 81%, an exceptional achievement as she described it, “In one of the hardest courses in college, it keeps me so busy in school and requires huge efforts by the student.”
Alaa continued, “I am aiming to specialize in Dermatology and Plastic Surgery; these are very important areas where specialists are rare in Gaza, I wish to help people in my country through medicine.”
Alaa added, “I would like to contribute to the refugee camp where I live and have grown up, it’s marginalized and a very underserved area. I spend my community service in a health center in the camp, and have seen that there is a lot that must be done. I would like to contribute to the health system and make services more patient focused.”
Alla finished, “In general female medics are still rare in Gaza and I think we need more female doctors, particularly in the obstetrics and gynecology.”
