Tina Wu has lived months without running water and electricity.
She has comforted and cried with AIDS patients in their final
weeks. She has seen an epidemic firsthand ““ one that many of
her peers only understand within the context of a classroom. The
second-year UCLA medical student is the cofounder of Students for
International Change, a student-run group that is working to
alleviate the HIV/ AIDS epidemic in Tanzania through education. Wu
is passionate about the importance of students broadening their
world through travel. “You can read about the AIDS epidemic
all you want, but you will never understand how devastating it is
until you see it with your own eyes,” she said. Since its
founding in 2002, the student group has sent students every summer
and fall to Tanzania to give free HIV tests, distribute condoms,
and dispel myths about the epidemic. The group targets its efforts
on the areas of Africa that bear the largest burden of the disease.
In 2003, AIDS was responsible for the deaths of over 2 million
people in Sub-Saharan Africa, as opposed to 18,000 people in North
America, according to the World Health Organization.
“Students can make the biggest difference through
education,” Wu said. “They can change hundreds of
thousands of lives.” Several other UCLA student groups have
expanded their efforts to improve health care at the international
level. This summer, six UCLA students from Engineers Without
Borders were on a different mission in a different part of the
world. Regina Quan, a third-year civil engineering student, became
comfortable with power tools in the remote village of Samil,
Thailand. “It was hard work, but knowing we were there for a
good cause was the motivation to do what we needed to do to make it
happen,” she said. The students helped to build a medical
clinic for the small village of 150 people who previously had no
access to even the simplest health care. They ate the local food,
stayed in the headmaster’s hut, and even purchased local
clothing and instruments. “[The villagers] were very grateful
for every day that we worked,” Quan said. “As each day
went along, we felt more comfortable.” Whether with wiring
and power drills, or HIV pamphlets and condoms, students
participating in such groups help construct a forum for cultural
exchange. “When you get out there, you realize most of the
world is very open and welcome,” Wu said. “A lot of
students say SIC changed their life because we show them things
they normally wouldn’t see,” she added. The UCLA
International Health Interest Group works to bring some of those
things to the UCLA campus by organizing seminars featuring speakers
who are both world travellers and health professionals. Steve
Doane, one of the group’s coordinators and a second-year
medical student, hopes that these speakers will inspire his
classmates to work abroad. “In America, we’ve been
given a lot of resources, and sharing that can make a great impact
in the lives of other communities around the world,” he said.
“For me that’s a privilege, and to some degree a
responsibility.” In the past decade, the global community has
been shrinking due to improved technology, travel and the spread of
information. “We hear that there’s famine over here,
genocide over there, malaria endemic over here,” Doane said.
“But whether or not we care depends on what we believe, and
whether we’ve had personal contact with people in those
areas,” he added. Groups with international outreach efforts
say they hope to increase both action and awareness by providing
direct and personal contact with international health issues. While
in Tanzania, Wu visited a late-stage AIDS patient who was dying
alone in a mud hut because her family had shunned her for her
condition. “We have the technology to prevent death, but they
can’t afford it,” she said. “In America, we
don’t really understand the difficulties that people go
through.” Although the playing field of the developing and
industrial worlds is far from level, much can be accomplished with
a simple change in attitude ““ even when it comes to
blueprints and engineering, according to members of engineering
groups. “You can’t go into it thinking we know more
than they do because they come from a poorer country,” said
Philip Wegge, a first-year graduate student in environmental
engineering and the president of the UCLA chapter of Engineers
Without Borders. Wegge worked with several of the Thai villagers in
building the clinic. “They had some easy ways to do things
that we wouldn’t have thought of with our computers and
drawings,” he added. Those realizations and opportunities can
lead to an impact from UCLA students that reverberates globally.
“I would hope that they would come away with an excitement
that the average medical student from California can go into an
unfamiliar place and really do something that is productive and
helpful and satisfying,” Doane said.