Leslie Shanks
Canadian medical doctor
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Leslie Shanks is a Canadian medical doctor who served as the president of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, the medical director of MSF Netherlands, and who led humanitarian responses in Yugoslavia, Zaire and Sudan.[1][2]
Leslie Shanks | |
|---|---|
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Alma mater | Queen's University |
| Known for | Humanitarian health work |
Education
Shanks graduated from Queen's University in 1988.[3]
Career
Employment
Shanks career started with work in northern parts of Canada providing healthcare to Indigenous communities.[1]
She joined Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1994[1] and was sent to Yugoslavia to lead humanitarian health responses the Bosnia War.[1] She subsequently led MSF's response in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) supporting refugees fleeing the Rwandan genocide, later managing a tuberculosis program in Sudan.[1][4][5] After her field work, she became the medical director of MSF's Operational Centre in Amsterdam[6][5][7] where she was part of a group that shifted MSF towards open sharing of medical data.[8][9] She is currently the medical advisor to the OCA council of the MSF Operational Center Amsterdam and temporary member of the International Board of MSF, https://www.msf.org/international-board
She has worked as the medical director at both the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto providing care to trans patients,[10] and also at Inner City Health Associates, the Toronto organization that provides care to people experiencing homelessness.[11][5]
She is one of the co-founders of Wanasah, a not-for-profit mental health association in Toronto.[citation needed]
Advocacy
Shanks been critical of the United States military, specifically their role in the Kunduz hospital airstrike,[5] and has participated in public awareness campaigns highlighting the plight of refugees.[12]
Selected publications
- Shanks, Leslie (2013). "To err is humanitarian". BMJ.
- Shanks, L; Klarkowski, D; O'Brien, DP (2013). "False positive HIV diagnoses in resource limited settings: operational lessons learned for HIV programmes". PLOS ONE. 8 (3) e59906. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...859906S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059906. PMC 3603939. PMID 23527284.
- Shanks, L; Ariti, C; Siddiqui, MR; Pintaldi, G; Venis, S; de Jong, K; Denault, M (2013). "Counselling in humanitarian settings: a retrospective analysis of 18 individual-focused non-specialised counselling programmes". Confl Health. 7 (1) 19. doi:10.1186/1752-1505-7-19. PMC 3849884. PMID 24041036.
- Shanks, Leslie; Schull, Michael J. (2000). "Rape in war: the humanitarian response". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 163 (9): 1152–1156. PMC 80250. PMID 11079062.
- De Lange, Rink, et al. "Keeping It Simple: A Gender-Specific Sanitation Tool for Emergencies." Waterlines, vol. 33, no. 1, Practical Action Publishing, 2014, pp. 45–54, JSTOR 24687555.