Samia Salem was born in Alexandria in 1948, where her father Hassan Salem was Professor of Tropical Medicine and her mother, Ehsan Naby, was an art teacher. She was educated at the Lycée Français in Alexandria, and then accompanied her father to Iraq in 1964 where she qualified from the University of Mosul in 1972, winning third prize in the final surgical examinations. She then came to London to study surgery. After junior posts she moved to Sydney to specialize in paediatric surgery and passed the FRACS in 1982. Her main interest was in tracheo-oesophageal fistula. Samia never married. Outside of medicine her interests were travel and music. Sadly, in 1993 she developed carcinoid, which spread to the liver and although she had a three year remission with chemotherapy, it recurred and she died on 14 December 1997.