NZ doctor off to Mideast hot spot

By KATHERINE HOBY

Robin Briant is returning books she has borrowed in case she doesn't come back.

The Auckland doctor, pacifist, and former Medical Council chairwoman is leaving for the Middle East on Sunday - "God willing and George Bush permitting".

Dr Briant is travelling to the Palestinian territory - her destination is the northern city of Jenin - with the international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

She says it is something she has wanted to do for several years.

Dr Briant worked in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1979-1980 and has had a yearning to do some similar work since then.

"So I have got a smidgen of experience but I don't know what I'm heading into until I get there. I expect it to be very full-on," she says.

She will be working with residents and refugees in Jenin. Some of the people living there are third generation refugees.

It is well-known where foreigners live and staff wear jackets emblazoned with MSF patches so Dr Briant expects to be in little personal danger.

"But you never know," she says.

"Crossing through checkpoints is always going to be dodgy. And part of my job is to transport doctors and patients through checkpoints. You can't predict what will happen."

She would consider it a horrible irony if, as a pacifist, she was "blown to kingdom come".

She was the chairwoman of the New Zealand branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Dr Briant says she has had a rich and full life working in the medical profession, and simply cannot imagine a quiet life just yet.

"I didn't fancy my retirement as putting my feet up and playing bridge. I don't even know how to play bridge," she says.

"I feel very privileged to have a medical degree. I have a certain desire for adventure and a sense of responsibility for the world."

While she is nervous about travelling to the Middle East with a war between the United States and Iraq brewing, Dr Briant is "keen to get going and to start helping".

She will travel to Paris first to be briefed on her position.

Dr Briant hopes that as she travels to the Palestinian territories whose people, she says, are clearly in distress, she will take some of the strengths of her homeland and the people who live here.

"Friendship and love and acceptance of people as who they are. That's what I hope to share," she says.

"And on my return I hope to feel like I have made a difference. That's all."

MSF was set up in 1971 by a group of French doctors to deliver emergency aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics, and natural and man-made disasters.

It provides primary health services, rebuilds hospitals, runs nutrition and sanitation programmes and trains local medical personnel in about 80 countries.