Mohamud Verjee
Member, Board of Directors

Mohamud first studied Biochemistry before pursuing his teenage wish to become a family physician. After graduating from the University of Dundee, Scotland, and training in Oxford, he gained postgraduate experience across a range of specialties, including Internal Medicine, Hematology Oncology, Geriatrics, General Surgery, Emergency Medicine, ENT, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Rheumatology, Blood Transfusion, Psychiatry, Preventive Medicine, and Rehabilitation at a National Centre in the United Kingdom. He opted to double the standard time of general practice training from one to two years. After working in the UK National Health Service for sixteen years, he migrated to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, earned board certification as a Family Physician, and expanded his academic life at the University of Calgary, where he was appointed to a faculty leadership position. Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q, Cornell University’s international campus) offered him another challenging opportunity to establish their primary care course, where he served as the inaugural clerkship director and later as an assistant dean of medical students’ affairs. Regularly publishing, he was nominated as a senior research fellow in Psychiatry at Clare College, Cambridge. He completed his MBA in Leadership and Sustainability at the Robert Kennedy College, Zurich, and graduated from the University of Cumbria after attending the Harvard Macy Institute in Boston, and is an alumnus of the HMI. A lifelong learner, Mohamud’s interest in global health motivated him to study for a Diploma of Infectious Diseases at the Royal College of Physicians, Dublin, Ireland, in 2024, where he distinguished himself by achieving some of the highest scores of his class in the consulting elements. His publication on Schistosomiasis (2017) has been viewed over 34,000 times with almost 200 citations. With experience across health systems in three continents, he developed a deeper understanding of care, management, human behaviour, and global health resources and philanthropy. The recipient of multiple teaching awards at the University of Calgary and Weill Cornell Medicine, he has followed the theme of “Disruptive innovation,” motivated by the teachings of Clay Christensen, DBA, at the Harvard Business School. As an international mentor, Mohamud expresses his life sentiments through narrative medicine and poetry. Having delivered a TEDxYouth talk, he is passionate about young medical students embarking on medical careers with an ethic of humanitarianism, empathy, interpersonal and communication skills, integrity, honesty, and professional respect, as well as an understanding of pluralism and diversity, and of the tradition of respect within professionalism in a civil society. Married with two grown-up sons, Mohamud listens to classical music, practices playing an instrument or two, keeps fit with 5000 steps daily, views artificial intelligence with excitement, and will never give up his Macintosh. His motto is “Never take no for a final answer.”

Bangladesh has one of the highest arsenic levels in groundwater in the world.

From its founding in 2005, Chemists Without Borders had a vision: to find a solution to the 40,000 Bangladeshis dying each year from illnesses caused by arsenic poisoning. In 2014, we started our project in Bangladesh and hired five interns to give presentations at high schools explaining the hazards of arsenic in drinking water. Later, we found funding to construct ring wells at two high schools whose wells were heavily contaminated with arsenic.

Currently, we are building a new drinking water and sanitation system at Terial High School in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh. A new well is being constructed to obtain water from the ground, which will be treated with an arsenic removal system to purify the water. Twenty drinking water and hand-washing stations are built to provide safe water to the students. The water will be sanitized with a UV disinfection system before it is supplied to the students for drinking and handwashing. This new arsenic remediation system was designed keeping in mind to solve the arsenic problem in the schools nationwide in Bangladesh.

Well-Water Testing Project

Bangladesh has one of the highest arsenic levels in groundwater in the world. The majority of Bangladeshi citizens use private wells to meet their water needs. Most wells are shallow, less than 300 feet in depth.

Chemists Without Borders recruits university and high school students to test the wells and educate the residents about arsenic and the possibility of sharing water from safe wells with families who take drinking water from contaminated wells.

 

Water-Sharing Project

Water-sharing is a unique program innovated by the Chemists Without Borders. This project is not just about water. It is about empowering young people to solve a health problem that has persisted for years. This program allows neighbors to share water from certified arsenic-free wells. Chemists Without Borders runs this program with the help of high school and college students. Students are trained in testing the well water using a field test kit. The results are shared with the well owners, and the owners are educated about the health risks of high arsenic in the water. Owners of the well with no arsenic or less than 50 ppb arsenic levels are encouraged to enroll in the water sharing program, where they can share the arsenic-safe well water with their neighbors at a nominal cost.

Community participation is at the core of this program. By involving the whole community, the water-sharing program allows for minimizing the risk of arsenic exposure to the population at the lowest cost. We intend to expand this program throughout Bangladesh and other countries where arsenic in water is a problem. The beauty of this model is that it is simple, yet effective; ambitious, yet realistic; extensive, yet cost-effective.