Khaled Almilaji

Khaled Almilaji is a Syrian doctor who is best known for his humanitarian work in Syria (including leading a large-scale polio vaccination campaign, where over 1.4 million Syrian children were inoculated), and for being forced to relocate from the U.S. to Canada as a result of the U.S. Executive Order 13769 (i.e. the travel ban).

Early life and education Almilaji was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981. He completed his medical training at the University of Aleppo's School of Medicine in 2006. He had planned to head to Stuttgart, Germany to train as a head and neck surgeon in March 2011, but instead joined other physicians in secretly treating injured protestors in the cities of Hama and Homs.

On 7 September. 2011, Almilaji and three colleagues were arrested for treating injured protestors, and were tortured by the Assad regime in prison. Despite his own injuries, prison authorities relied on Almilaji to treat other prisoners (while blind-folded).

In 2013, there was a polio outbreak in Syria, which was detected in part thanks to Almilaji's EWARN system.

In 2014, Almilaji met Jehan Mouhsen (a Syrian physician born in Montenegro). The two married in Germany in July 2016. He planned to return to Rhode Island in time for his classes in the winter semester, which began on 25 January. At this point, his wife was five weeks pregnant, and stayed in New York with friends.

Almilaji moved to Toronto, Canada, on 16 June 2017, where he was reunited with his wife. The hospital has partnered with Brown University and the University of Toronto to provide training for staff.

On 12 December 2017, Almilaji, alongside his fellow CIMRO co-founders, was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by Governor General of Canada Julie Payette, in recognition of his efforts as a civilian in providing medical relief and training to global disaster-struck areas.

Almilaji ultimately plans to return to Syria to rebuild the nation's medical system.

Selected bibliography

B Tajaldin K Almilaji, P Langton, A Sparrow. Defining Polio: Closing the Gap in Global Surveillance. Annals of Global Health. 2015. A Sparrow, K Almilaji, B Tajaldin, N Teodoro, P Langton. Cholera in the time of war: implications of weak surveillance in Syria for the WHO's preparedness—a comparison of two monitoring systems. BMJ Global Health. 2016. M Elamein, H Bower, C Valderrama, D Zedan, H Rihawi, K Almilaji, et al. Attacks against health care in Syria, 2015–16: results from a real-time reporting tool. The Lancet. 2017.