Dr. Mary McLoughlin
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A former University College Cork graduate, Dr Mary McLoughlin joined GOAL in 1987 and has since worked in some of the most war-ravaged regions of the world, including Iraq, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.
In 1997, Dr McLoughlin was presented with the People of the Year Award, and in 2006 she was awarded the prestigious Medical School Medal by University College Cork.
Prior to receiving her UCC medal, Dr McLoughlin encouraged the college’s newly-qualified doctors to consider the prospect of joining an organisation such as GOAL. She told them that this would significantly help efforts to address the enormous health inequalities between the developing and developed worlds.
In 1994, as war raged around her, Mary was trapped alongside UN personnel in the Muslim city of Gorazde, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Messages from Mary and her colleagues about the slaughter of civilians by the Serb Army besieging the town prompted the NATO ultimatum to the Serbs that eventually broke the siege.
Mary faced personal danger before this in 1990 while working in a hospital in Baghdad. Following the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein took all Westerners in the country hostage. Medical workers were not used as a human shield like other foreigners, but they faced threats and worries that they would be caught up in a major war. The hostage period lasted for five month before Saddam released all Westerners just before the start of the first Gulf War in January 1991. This experience did not dampen her spirit, and she continues with her life saving work for GOAL to this day.
Most recently, Mary completed a short tour of duty for GOAL in Pakistan, where she helped the agency provide relief to victims of the flooding that devastated the country over the summer of 2010.