Jessica Burry says award for overseas work an 'honour'
The following article appears on CBC NL's website.
A Memorial University graduate from Bloomfield has been honoured for bringing her knowledge around the world to help those in need.
Jessica Burry is this year's recipient of the Horizon Award for exceptional achievement by a Memorial graduate under the age of 35.
"It was quite a surprise," said Burry. "I didn't expect that was the phone call I was going to get that day, but it's really a nice honour to get that award."
Burry graduated from Memorial's pharmacy program in 2006. She expected to pursue a career in hospital pharmacy, but while attending a post-graduate program in Ottawa she signed up for a three-week humanitarian project in West Africa.
"It was really a fascinating three weeks and after that I decided I should try it again," Burry told CBC's Corner Brook Morning Show.
"I guess I had a bit of a travel bug and from there on I realized that I needed to sort of figure out a way to make it part of my career."
'Different' than work done in Canada
Since then, Burry has been all over the world on humanitarian missions with her expertise in HIV/AIDS treatment.
One of her missions with Doctors Without Borders took her to Swaziland. While there, Burry was training and managing a team of pharmacy technicians who were working in area clinics.
"We were supporting the ministry of health clinics, 18 or 20 different clinics in the area so they needed quite a bit of pharmacy support," said Burry. "Really quite different than anything I had done here."
She said people living in Canada are quite fortunate, since having access to medicines and health care is something that doesn't exist in the countries she has worked in.
Burry finds her work challenging, but rewarding at the same time, and said a lot of people are living well under the poverty line and being able to provide access to health care really makes a difference.
"In some of these countries you can see there is such a need," said Burry. "It' s just the little things that sort of add up."
In September 2013, Burry was also honoured with Memorial University's School of Pharmacy Alumni Achievement Award.