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The Conversation

Factual: Life Stories

Two women from different parts of the world share the stories of their lives

Two women from different parts of the world, united by a common passion, experience or expertise, share the stories of their lives.

The Conversation: Surgeons: Houriya Kazim and Maria Siemionow

Dr Houriya Kazim and Dr Maria Siemionow (Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin/UIC Photo Services)

19/01/2015

Surgeons: Houriya Kazim and Maria Siemionow

BBC World Service - The Conversation, Surgeons: Houriya Kazim and Maria Siemionow

Experiences from the UAE's first female surgeon and the Polish face transplant specialist

The smells and sleepless nights involved in performing major operations. From face transplants in the USA to breast surgery in Dubai, two surgeons share their inner thoughts.

When Houriya Kazim became the United Arab Emirates' first ever woman surgeon in the late 1990s she chose to specialise in breast surgery. Accusations of immodesty and even pornography followed as Houriya's educational pamphlets fell foul of the authorities' restrictions on language and images of women's bodies. Despite making progress in encouraging women to check their breasts for signs of cancer she has seen tumours so advanced that they have  burst out of the skin. She describes how when that happens, "they smell and it's right under your nose." 

Maria Siemionow has led the surgical teams on the only two face transplant operations to have been performed in the USA, in December 2008 and in September 2014. Born and raised in Poland, Maria says her parents - both economists - inspired her ambition to "be in charge" and a childhood doing handicrafts prepared her for the 'embroidery' of microsurgery (operating under a microscope).  She is professor of orthopaedic surgery in the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

(Photo: Surgeons Houriya Kazim (left) and Dr Maria Siemionow. Credit: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin/UIC Photo Services)

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