Dr. Hiba Zaaroura, DFL First Medical Fellow

Daughters for Life are proud to announce that Dr. Hiba Zaaroura is the Daughters for Life first fellow ever to have completed the Medical Fellowship with the Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. We are so eager to share this accomplishment with our community!

Born in Jerusalem, Dr. Zaaroura was raised in the small village of Reineh in Israel. She was exposed to the medical craft throughout her childhood due to her sister’s condition that required frequent hospital visits. In her words, she spent a lot of her time on the playground outside the hospitals and was quickly inspired to follow the family tradition to become a Doctor. After finishing high school with excellence, Dr. Zaaroura got into Israel’s best medical school in Haifa.

During the last year of medical school, Dr. Zaaroura discovered her interest in Dermatology and thus, decided to complete her residency in the Department of Dermatology at Rambam Health Care Campus, including rotations at the Pathology, Paediatric, and Plastic Surgery departments.

After finishing her residency in Israel. Dr. Zaaroura was aspiring to train in a clinically strong Dermatology fellowship program to become part of a program that can combine her clinical and research skills so that she can make a worthwhile contribution to the Dermatology field in her country.

Dr. Zaaroura joined the Daughters for Life family in 2019 to start her fellowship in Advanced medical Dermatology at Sunnybrook hospital in the summer of that year. She completed the program in September of 2020, after which she has taken on the second Fellowship in Pediatric Dermatology at Sickkids.

An opportunity like this is made possible by the gracious support of the donors, partners, and the whole DFL community. The partnership with the University of Toronto- Sunnybrook Health Science Center under Professor Neil Shear’s supervision started in 2017. The University and Daughters for Life have collaborated to support the success of young women from the Middle East, like Dr. Zaaroura.  Daughters for Life is proud of partnerships like this with such a highly accredited institution as the University of Toronto; together we hope to provide a chance for growth and prosperity for these young women to contribute to the success of their communities. Dr. Zaaroura was the first DFL medical fellow to complete the post-graduate fellowship, including the criminal appointments and academic advising of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Besides the academic and professional success in medicine’s competitive field, Dr. Zaaroura is also a sister, a daughter, a mother, and a wife!

We believe that empowering women in their professional development is an impactful act of bettering the Middle East countries.

After finishing her fellowship in Canada, Dr. Zaaroura hopes she can develop the dermatology field in her community and share her new knowledge with her colleagues and residents.