As Australians overseas scramble to get home, Sydney-based obstetric surgeon Dr Andrew Browning is “desperate” to leave the country to get back to Ethiopia to help in a worsening famine crisis.

Dr Browning will join his aunt, midwife Valerie Browning in an Ethiopian community where thousands of children and women are starving after drought, locusts, and now the impacts of COVID-19. 

When news and photos of the unfolding disaster reached Dr Browning, he felt he had to get back as quickly as possible to support his aunt’s work and draw attention to their plight. 

Dr Browning usually travels five or six times a year to operate and teach in a number of countries in Africa, where he treats women with catastrophic fistulas following obstructed birth.