Saleyha Ahsan is a practising A&E doctor, a former Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and a broadcaster.
Saleyha regularly reports for The One Show on BBC One. Most recently, she presented two documentaries for Channel 4, Coronavirus: Can Our NHS Cope? exploring the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the UK’s health services and What’s It Like to Catch Coronavirus?
Saleyha also presented several series of the hit BBC Two health series, Trust Me I'm a Doctor, The Truth About Fat and Fast Tales about Ramadan for BBC One and a BBC Two Horizon special on the Longitude Prize.
After passing out of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Saleyha joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, where she led her troop on an operational tour of Bosnia. It was there that Saleyha was inspired by the work of military doctors and applied to study medicine. Her medical and military background form the inspiration for her media work to date including reports for Newsnight on Army medical preparations for battleground theatres and a BBC Inside Out special on troops returning from service in Afghanistan.
Saleyha left the Army in 2000 and settled into being a medical student and returned to journalism.
Once a civilian Saleyha proceeded to work in hostile environments training. Her on-screen experience began in 2001 when she was co-presented and filmed for a Chameleon Films series, Dangerous Journeys for Channel 4, which saw her travelling to both the Indian and Pakistan sides of Kashmir interviewing Kashmiri mujahideen in the pre-9/11 era. She presented a BBC Radio 5 Live Special report from within a mujahideen training camp in Kashmir, after gaining exclusive access just weeks after 9/11 and then also went onto make a further special report in Palestine during the intifada of 2002.
During the uprising in Libya, Saleyha spent six months independently filming doctors on the frontline. She reported for the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent, Channel 4 News online, BBC online, the BMJ online and Latitude News. She can self-shoot, which allows her to undertake solo projects and is currently filming on her Canon 60D dslr.
Saleyha has contributed to the Guardian’s Comment is Free pages which has included bringing a week-long series to Guardian Films about the use of secret evidence within the British Justice system. She has written for the Lancet and the New Internationalist.
She directed her debut cinematic short film My Mother’s Daughter in 2008 which won Best European Film at Los Angeles based film festival, Pangea Day backed by the TED organisation and also Best International Film for the Tehran based Parvania Etesami Film festival.
In 2011 Saleyha completed a masters degree in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
Her first Radio 4 drama script The Road to Bani Walid broadcast in 2015.
During Saleyha's time in the British Army she gave regular presentations to large audiences with the Army Presentation Team.
She has also spoken at a number of events in her role as a doctor including at medical conferences. She has given talks about her time in Libya, where she both worked as a frontline doctor and as a journalist and filmmaker and has spoken at the Royal Society of Medicine Extreme Medicine conference.
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