OTTAWA, Ontario – A former emergency doctor in Cornwall is helping to bring meaningful changes to vast Africa one step at a time.
“I became aware of the huge refugee issue, the historical tribal violence and poverty in Africa,” explains Dr. Wilfred Chung.
He visited Uganda in East Africa to learn of problems facing the continent.
Born in Hong Kong, Chung came to Canada as a student in 1972 to study chemistry and physics at McMaster University and medicine at the University of Toronto.
After completing his internship at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, he moved to Cornwall as an emergency physician in 1981.
Dr. Chung has been deeply involved with Philomathia Foundation, which promotes human values and science through education and research.
The foundation was established in 2004 by the Chung brothers as a private charitable organization registered in Canada and Hong Kong.
Dr. Chung has been its chief executive officer since 2007.
Other partners of the foundation are Berkeley University of California, University of Cambridge, McMaster University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
”Our hope and aim is to arouse interest in African issues in a bid to improve the welfare of Africa,” added Dr. Chung.
He worked in Cornwall for many years as an emergency doctor and later moved to Ottawa in 2006.
Dr. Chung went to the Ugandan capital of Kampala and Gulu to launch the foundation’s African program.
“Our hope is to create opportunities for local graduates to do more research work,” he said. “We are hoping that by providing advance education to certain local young people, our program will bring about some meaningful changes to the continent.”
The Philomathia Foundation provides funding to support research and graduate students at four universities.
The main areas of focus are alternative energy, climate change and the environment.
Dr. Chung often travels to other universities to help develop new programs.
He said the foundation helps to seek solutions to some of the world’s most intractable challenges.
Dr. Chung is hoping creating new pathways on the global scene will have a lasting impact on the human condition.
