SON prof wins award for international service
Looking over her resume from more than a decade of international development work, Dr. Donna Moralejo, associate dean (graduate programs) at Memorial's School of Nursing, can't say for sure but thinks it was her interest in travel to remote destinations that led to her first volunteer project.
It was 2002 and she had travelled to Haiti for 3 ½ months with the World Health Organization's (WHO) Stop Transmission of Polio Project. It was such a good experience that through networking and collaborations with other key partners, one project quite naturally led to another.
Twelve years later and Dr. Moralejo has just received, in front of a large and admiring group of her peers, the 2015 Moira Walker Memorial Award for International Service from Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) Canada.
"It's an honor to receive it, especially as I had met Moira Walker at a number of conferences over the years," she said.
A nurse and past president of IPAC Canada, Moira Walker played a key role in international infection prevention through her involvement with the International Federation of Infection Control.
Dr. Moralejo was nominated by her colleagues from the province's IPAC chapter and named by IPAC Canada as this year's award recipient for her many community-based projects in countries such as Haiti, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Burkina Faso.
"It's so interesting to see how other people live, work, and cope," said Dr. Moralejo, who draws on her skills in nursing, epidemiology, and microbiology to help strengthen disease surveillance systems and improve immunization by helping build capacity in healthcare workers and programs. "It gives you such a different perspective on resilience. Many people don't have basic necessities like soap and water and yet they are cheerful and work very hard at being able to move things forward."
Dr. Moralejo wishes that more people from developed counties could see how others live. "I think we would become more compassionate and understanding."
Her most memorable project, and there were many cited by the awards committee of IPAC Canada, was in Ethiopia back in 2008-2009. She worked with health sciences students in nursing, medicine and pharmacy to help develop their knowledge and skills related to immunization programs, part of which included training of community-based health extension workers.
"You could really see the building of the health extension worker roles, and development of interpersonal skills among the students, who also ran clinics and immunized a lot of children," she said. "It's just amazing how a few people can help others to do good things."