From Cameroon to Harvard

I am Ulrick Sidney, I am a Cameroonian and an aspiring neurosurgeon. My country is nicknamed "Africa in miniature" because of the diversity of its people, culture, and ecosystem. I was born to a Francophone family but I studied in the anglophone regions. That meant that at school I was the French guy and at home I was the English guy. This dual identity has helped me understand and accept pluralism in humanity. I was fortunate to have a great dad. He took me all over Cameroon and these trips exposed me to the suffering of my fellow country men. I moved to DR Congo to study medicine and here I found out that people were having hard times everywhere. These experiences motivated my passion for medicine and have made me who I am today. Too often during my internships I witnessed my patients and their families suffer. I believe that this is not the way it should be. People should not die because they are poor, they shouldn't have to stay at the hospital for months because they cannot foot their bills. I decided to do something about it and discovered global surgery. Five billion people worldwide lack access to safe, timely, and affordable surgical, obstetric, and anesthesia care, and my two countries -Cameroon and DRC- fall almost entirely under it, losing hundreds of thousands of people to death or severe disability due to lack of surgical care each year.

After establishing InciSioN DRC in my country, and virtually connecting with thousands of students around the world to advocate for access to safe surgical care for all and bring change locally, I decided to be ambitious and apply for the renowned Program in Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC) at Harvard Medical School. After many months of rigorous selection procedures, in January I was accepted. It was not until two weeks after my acceptance that I was able to read the mail, as I was without internet due to network and electricity dropouts the entire two weeks before.



Harvard's PGSSC program will help me grow as a global surgery advocate and as a human being. The skills and experiences gained there will be invaluable and capital to the making the necessary changes for people to live better lives. However, coming from Cameroon and the DRC, I do not have the capability to cover everything financially, despite my family and friends already having done their best to set some money aside. 

I hope you can help me, Cameroon, and DRC, in trying to bring a change in this world and allowing me to attend the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship for the year 2019-2020. 

Desmond Tanko, a public health analyst at the PGSSC and fellow Cameroonian will be setting up withdrawals for this campaign.

Thank you/Merci beaucoup!