Dr Alexander Kumar

Health | Medicine in Extreme Environments

Who am I

Alexander Kumar is a British doctor.


Based in UK, Alex has lived, worked and travelled through over 70 countries and is an experienced expedition medic to remote areas of the world.  Realising knowledge and a sense humour weigh nothing, Alex travels light, armed only with a stethoscope and curiosity for life.


After wriggling free from the restriction of his school years, he spent the next year living in Nepal teaching English.  He later graduated with a Medical Degree from Guy’s, King’s & St. Thomas’ in London, following numerous medical placements including in India, Israel, Shetland and the Amazon.  He also holds a first class honours degree in International Health.


Fascinated by life in the Polar Regions from a young age, he followed his heart to the Canadian Arctic, where he completed his dissertation conducting the first piece of research on HIV among Inuit.

100 years on from Scott and Shackleton, Alex travelled to Antarctica and spent around one year (2012) living at Concordia, a joint French-Italian inland Antarctic research station as the Human Spaceflight Research MD to conduct research for the European Space Agency in an attempt to understand how far human physiology and psychology can be pushed towards a future manned mission to Mars.  Living and over-wintering as the only British national among a team of 13 Europeans in the most extreme and remote environment on the planet, enduring over 3 months of complete 24-hour darkness, alongside the world’s coldest temperatures dropping down below minus 80 degrees Celsius, the crew survived in complete isolation with no means of escape for 9 months- simulating life on the surface of another planet. 


Alex returned to Antarctica to join the Shackleton Epic Expedition, recreating Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famous escape from Antarctica filmed for the Discovery Channel.


Later working with Dr Mike Stroud, Alex developed the White Mars human science space analogue study for Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ Coldest Journey, which attempted the first land crossing of Antarctica during winter.

He holds a special research interest in tropical medicine and snake bite- having witnessed its devastating effects to communities in Asia, Africa and South America alongside disaster relief and humanitarian work.

Drawing Attention to Global Health inequality he uses film and photography to help raise awareness about issues, including indigenous population health.

Alex enjoys sharing his enthusiasm and passion for the natural world in writing, public speaking, photography and television.


Alex is on the teaching faculty for www.expeditionmedicine.co.uk.


Alex is a huge fan and supporter of one of his favourite charities, Guide Dogs for the Blind

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United Kingdom

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