Students

Comments by Michael Dewan on his experience in Uganda…

My freshman year, I went to Honduras with MEDICO (Medical Eye Dental International Care Organization-a nonprofit based in Texas) and worked at a temporary health clinic where I assisted and translated for American physicians. My exposure to extreme poverty and illness in this setting motivated me to seek other opportunities abroad.

Initially, I went to Uganda through the CSC solely to be a primary school teacher. When I got there I found myself spending half of my time at the school and the other half at the clinic. While I was at St. Francis Healthcare Clinic in Njeru, Uganda, I worked as a laboratory technician at the understaffed facility. While both working at the main facility and making home visits, I took blood samples and tested them for HIV, malaria, hepatitis, and TB. I was able to see the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to disease and death. It was an incredibly influential experience from which I hold many stories and many emotions.

I came down with malaria in my fifth week in Uganda. I spent a couple of nights in a medical clinic there in Uganda, where I received quinine treatment. I was only sick for about a week, mainly because I was able to afford the treatment, which came out to be equivalent to $8.00 US (including the testing, bed, medicine, staff visits, etc.) When I discovered how cheap it was, I was furious. You and I spend the same amount of money on a burger and fries without thinking twice. Meanwhile millions of children are dying from this same disease every year simply because they cannot afford the treatment (the same treatment that couldbuy us the “value meal”). Pretty messed up, don’t you think?

The experience really did change my perspective on global healthcare and life in general. It allowed me to match faces with statistics—a combination that can be really powerful, especially if you could see some of the faces. I think the global health crisis is just that, a crisis and an emergency. Not only that, it is an emergency we have the ability and resources to treat. While the problem is huge and the solution is even bigger, it is within our reach as a society, it is only a matter of education, planning, and most importantly, willpower.

As we sit here reading, writing, whatever, there are people needlessly dying from diseases whose cures have long been known. Complacency kills …

Next year I will be starting medical school and will certainly keep international healthcare as the main theme of my education. As a professional—in both academic and clinical medicine—I look forward to taking my career abroad to those places that are without medical care.