Elena Tsoy was very close to choosing law over medicine, but largely thanks to her mother’s strong encouragement, she ended up pursuing a medical career instead. Today she works at the WHO Country Office in Uzbekistan as a National Professional Officer, assisting the Government of Uzbekistan with its ambitious health system reform. When not working, she enjoys late-evening walks with her family, goes swimming or takes classes in traditional Uzbek dances. In this interview she talks about her work, the need for patience, and the butterfly effect.
What’s your background?
I’m medical doctor by profession. Actually, I should thank my mother – she’s the one who kept pointing out that medicine was a great profession, and well suited for someone with logical thinking and my type of character. Although I had dreamt of becoming a lawyer, I went to medical school and have a postgraduate degree in paediatrics. However, working in the department of neonatology and serious pathologies during my postgraduate training and seeing newborns with very serious conditions made me realize it would be unbearable for me to see the suffering and death of newborns. I needed to find a way to help those children from a different perspective, so I retrained to be a general practitioner.
What brought you to WHO?
A friend of mine who worked for WHO encouraged me to apply for a vacancy, and I did. I was selected and joined WHO in 2009 as a National Professional Officer for noncommunicable diseases. It was a dream for me to work for the United Nations, for WHO – it’s such a unique opportunity to work with top-level experts, translating their experience and recommendations into action at country level. If I can save one or two lives working as a doctor, I can scale that up to much bigger proportions working for WHO.
What does your work as a technical officer entail?
To put it simply, we work with the government and technical specialists to design and plan how to improve the entire health system. As a technical officer for health systems strengthening, I support the Government of Uzbekistan in designing health strategies, introducing best practices, protocols and WHO standards. I also work with the government on medical education and health workforce planning. It’s not always easy, but advocating for the needs of people and better health for everyone is extremely rewarding. I actually received the Excellence in Health award from the Uzbek Ministry of Health in 2020 – it was a recognition of both of my personal and my WHO colleagues’ contribution to the health of the people of Uzbekistan. But you could also summarize my work with the words of my younger son, who put it this way when he was six years old: “My mum is teaching others how to treat sick people and stay healthy”.
That’s brilliant. Can you give us an example of how your work has affected others?
Change doesn’t always happen overnight – you need to be patient. Let me give you one example of a training programme on hospital care for child patients that I was leading. One aspect involved introducing oxygen in the admissions department of hospitals as part of emergency care so that patients could receive oxygen immediately if needed, to save precious seconds. We measured both distance and time to estimate exactly how many seconds or minutes it would take to provide care and oxygen in situations of urgency, from the moment a patient arrives. After the training and our recommendations, we returned to the hospitals to see the results and found nothing had changed. We had to start over. I remember talking to my mother about how my team and I had really put our hearts and souls into the trainings. I felt terrible, but my wise mother said, “Hold on. Did nothing change or did something change?” “Well,” I replied, “they did save the life of one child in the admissions department after providing the child with oxygen.” My mother looked at me and said, “If your programme helped save even one child’s life, it’s already big progress. It’s one life saved. That’s not nothing.” The lesson I learned was that progress isn’t always as fast as you would like it to be, but even small changes can save a life. And that one small change might have a butterfly effect. Today the programme has been implemented nationwide – which means that our work did indeed make a difference.
How do you take care of your own health?
During the COVID-19 pandemic we developed a really nice habit in my family – taking walks every evening before bed. We often explored new parts of the city, some areas I had never even noticed before! And I got up to almost 20 000 steps every day. Those moments together were very precious. We also used to go swimming regularly, and it was so nice to get back into the water after lockdowns ended, while of course respecting current public health and social measures. My youngest son is taking regular swimming classes and he’s very good at it; he already won a medal in his first competition. I also like dancing – I take classes in traditional Uzbek dances. The culture in the different parts of Uzbekistan is very diverse, with each region having its own traditional music, dances and costumes.
What a perfect bridge to the last question. Give us your best music, film and book tip!
The little free time I have I prefer to spend with my family rather than reading. I do so much reading anyway. When it comes to music, I’m all over the map, so I’d go with anything composed by Tchaikovsky, but also like Bryan Adams and Scorpions (laughs). My film tip would be The Intouchables, with Omar Sy and François Cluzet. The film makes you laugh and it shows you the value of friendship and how someone can impact your life in unexpected ways.
WHO Country Office in Uzbekistan
- Number of staff: 20
- CO operating since (year): 1993
- Key focus areas: Infectious diseases; Health systems strengthening toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to support health reforms; Noncommunicable diseases (NCD) prevention and control (Tobacco, Alcohol, Nutrition and Physical activity, Cardiovascular diseases, Cancer); Mental health; TB/HIV/Hepatitis; Vaccine-preventable diseases (VPD); International Health Regulations and Health emergencies, Antimicrobial resistance; Health service delivery for Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH).