Saleyha Ahsan
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Saleyha Ahsan | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Ahsan in 2013 | |
| Born | Barking, London, United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | University of Dundee School of Medicine |
| Occupations | Medical doctor, filmmaker, presenter |
| Known for | Trust Me I’m a Doctor, reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic |
Saleyha Ahsan is a British physician, presenter and journalist. She has worked as a humanitarian doctor in conflict zones and as an A&E doctor in the UK, presented programmes including Trust Me I’m a Doctor and reported on conflict, social affairs, medicine, healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ahsan was born c. 1970 in Barking, London. Her mother was born in Kenya and her father was born in Pakistan but lived in India before arriving in the UK.[1] She is the eldest of six siblings, all of whom have pursued careers in the National Health Service.[2]
Career
Ahsan graduated with an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Salford.[1]
She was the first British Muslim woman to attend the integrated male and female Royal Military Academy Sandhurst's Officer commissioning course.[3] She achieved the rank of Captain in the British Army, and served in Bosnia as part of the NATO stabilisation force,[4] completing three years in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Medical Support Officer.[1]
Ahsan qualified as a doctor (MB ChB) in 2006 at the University of Dundee School of Medicine, and gained her LLM in International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law in 2011.[1] She worked as a humanitarian doctor in Libya during the Arab Spring in 2011, and then in Syria in 2013.[5][6][7]
She works as an Accident and Emergency doctor in Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital, in Bangor, North Wales.[8][9]
Media and presenting
In 2008 her short film My Mother’s Daughter won Best European Film at Los Angeles film festival, Pangea.[10] In 2018 she appeared on Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls on Channel 4.[11]
Ahsan has presented a number of programmes for Channel 4 and the BBC on the COVID-19 pandemic, including Dispatches - Coronavirus: Can Our NHS Cope? and What’s It Like to Catch Coronavirus? (Channel 4) and The One Show, Panorama, Newsnight, Trust Me I’m a Doctor and Horizon (BBC).[4][10][12] She has also worked for The Guardian and ITV.[13][14] In mid‑January 2022, Ahsan wrote dismissively about the unfolding British government partygate crisis from the perspective of a doctor working in emergency medicine during the UK COVID-19 pandemic.[15]