Biography
Major Alenko Šakanović is a member of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). He was born and raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was in a refugee camp in Croatia during the Yugoslav war where he got inspired to study medicine after seeing Doctors without Frontiers treating his family members. He subsequently came to Canada as a refugee and moved to Ottawa to complete his BSc and MSc degrees in Biochemistry and Human Molecular Genetics at the University of Ottawa.
Major Šakanović completed medical school and Family Medicine residency at the University of Ottawa under the Medical Officer Training Plan (MOTP) upon joining CAF. He spent five years as a military family physician in Petawawa and Trenton before being accepted into the CAF postgraduate training program for Orthopaedic Surgery. He completed Orthopaedic Surgery residency and fellowships in Orthopaedic Trauma and Comprehensive Hand & Wrist Surgery at the University of Ottawa. He has deployed with CAF to the Philippines, Kuwait, Iraq, Poland, Lebanon, and the Canadian Arctic.