EMTs to aid sick in Indian summer
By Emily Bjorklund
One thing Brigid Quigley and Kelsey Whittier can be sure of this summer is that they won't be contracting Japanese encephalitis. The Santa Clara juniors will be armed with a cache of vaccinations and malaria pills, on top of anti-retrograde pills to prevent the contraction of HIV, in case they're accidentally poked by a needle.
At the end of June, Quigley and Whittier will venture to hospitals in and around Bombay, India. The two were accepted through a San Francisco-based non-profit organization called Child Family Health International to volunteer their services and gain medical experience through studying infectious disease up close in India.
The program will require Quigley and Whittier to travel to six different hospitals in the Mumbai region of India with other Americans, most of whom are medical students.
Whittier, a psychobiology major, and Quigley, a biology and economics double major, both plan on pursuing careers in the medical field after graduation. They look at this experience as one that will give them field experience beyond that which could ever be offered in any hospital in a developed country.
"We will get to see the challenges they face in sustaining what we consider to be normal standards of health care," Whittier said. "As of now, their doctor visits are on a must-see emergency basis, even if they are that lucky, as opposed to our maintenance-based health care system."
Quigley, who has just returned from a fall semester abroad program in London, expects a whole new level of culture shock.
"The culture and lifestyle will be completely different," she said. "Everything from social class and standards of care will be so foreign. I will see diseases that have been completely eradicated in western countries, like malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy and typhoid fever -- diseases we don't even think twice about here."
Despite their intrinsic desire to be in such close contact with contagion, the girls, who are both certified emergency medical technicians, have experienced formidable obstacles in arranging their journey to Bombay, India. Both have researched, booked, cancelled, and even paid for, multiple flights with disreputable airlines. But no problems they have encountered so far will stop them from pursuing their mission.
Quigley said that although her parents are excited for her adventure, they have experienced major frustration with the flight situation and are extremely worried about the circumstances she will be living in.
"My mom said, 'How did you come from me? I don't even like to going to hotels that don't have mints on the pillows and you won't even have hot water!'" she said.
The girls will be residing in "two to three person guest houses," as described by the program, which failed to provide any detail on the presence of either running water or electricity.
Whittier plans on bringing lots of bug spray and a soft pillow to comfort her in a faraway country that she can only imagine pre-departure.
"I see it as a split world between the extravagance of Bollywood and the images of Mother Teresa with impoverished children in the streets Calcutta," she said.
Although the girls confess that they hope to come home with colorful saris and exotic souvenirs of the colorful India seen on film, they will be living, working and helping the ones in the less entertaining and vastly less fortunate half of the lifestyle and economic spectrum.
* Contact Emily Bjorklund at (408) 554-4546 or ebjorklund@scu.edu.