Munjed Al Muderis (born 25 June 1972) is an Australian adjunct clinical professor in orthopaedic surgery, author and human rights activist.
[3] Al Muderis wrote the book Walking Free on his experiences in Iraq, in the Australian immigration detention system, and on his career in Australia.
[citation needed] In 1999, he was forced to flee Iraq when he was working as a junior surgeon at Saddam Hussein Medical Centre in Baghdad.
[1] Al Muderis developed a new form of implant, osseointegration prosthetic limb, which addressed several issues previously faced by patients.
[10] News Corp Australia and The Australian Women's Weekly have ranked Al Muderis as one of the world's top osseointegration surgeons.
[13] Al Muderis was a first year resident[1] at Saddam Hussein Medical Centre[4] in Baghdad before he fled Iraq and his career was disrupted.
[1] He is an orthopaedic surgeon and treats his patients at Macquarie University, Bella Vista, Drummoyne and Sydney Adventist Hospital clinics.
[19] The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is spending £2m on trials that were to begin in 2016 and involve 20 amputees who were to undergo Al Muderis' osseointegration procedure.
[28] In 2022, a joint investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes (all divisions of Nine Entertainment) alleged there were serious questions around Al Muderis's approach to patient selection and aftercare.
[29] Subsequently, a concerns notice was issued by lawyers for Al Muderis to Nine Publications, 60 Minutes, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, to commence defamation proceedings.
[30] On 31 October 2022, Al Muderis issued defamation proceedings against Channel Nine, Fairfax Publications and the Age company in the Federal Court of Australia.
[32] This decision was very rapidly reversed following publication of an open letter of support for Al Muderis signed by more than 1500 former and current patients and colleagues.
The decision by Avant to withdraw insurance cover was also criticised as deeply worrying, undertaken as it was in response to unfounded allegations in the popular media and in the absence of any regulatory involvement.
[37] He has spoken out about the misconceptions around seeking asylum in Australia and joined a panel at a live screening for the SBS program Go Back To Where You Came From[38][39] in the hopes of building a more compassionate and caring community.
[40] According to the Australian of the Year Awards, Funded out of his own pocket, [Al Muderis] has taken a team to his former homeland of Iraq seven times, to help the victims of the conflict he fled, and has educated other orthopaedic surgeons in the osseointegration technique and in complex limb reconstruction.
[42] In February 2023, Al Muderis was made an ambassador to the "Unbroken" project in Ukraine after leading a team of Australian doctors who performed more than 20 extremely complex limb reconstructions and prosthetics operations at the hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv.
[1] In his book, he shared his life and experience in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's regime, his journey to seek asylum in Australia and how he worked towards being a world leader in osseointegration surgery.
[49] The book describes his return to Iraq after eighteen years, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, to operate on soldiers, police and civilian amputees wounded in the war against ISIS.