Outreach Clinic: Real Worlds Colliding
Sravani Mudumbi tells how the Universidad Iberoamericana chapter of AMSA has been doing outreach work in Santo Domingo
The group of doctors from the Shriner’s hospital for children, has been unquestionably improving quality of life of children by providing first-class medical care to low-income family children in the Dominican Republic for more than 25 years now. Their area of expertise includes orthopedic problems and spinal cord injuries and provide this aid free-of-charge. Several times a year, outreach clinics are held in Santo Domingo, when the hospital’s medical staff and assistants provide treatment and evaluate children. The next outreach clinic will be held in June at CEDIMAT (Plaza de la Salud). The members of Universidad Iberoamericana chapter of AMSA has been working with them for three years now by volunteering their free time as bilingual translators while accumulating clinical experience in the field of their interest, may it be orthopedic surgery, pediatrics or public health. I describe my experience below.
Though tropical rain was pouring, all the cars on the road continued with their windows down (mainly due to the lack of air conditioning). I looked around and saw that this probably isn’t unusual and noticed that the women seated in public cars had plastic covers on their heads. When we stopped at the traffic light, it became evident that most cars surrounding us were tuned into the same radio station as they were all blaring in unison. Of the usual radio talk, normally perceived as unintelligible banter by foreigners, stood out a woman’s voice. My Spanish course (in the USA) had not prepared me to understand her dialect.
By listening closely, I managed to pick up a few key words to decipher what she was actually saying. She called into the show to disclose how her baby had been brought out of a congenital non-ambulatory state by an orthopaedist from the United States. She described intricately the shape of her feet to be like human hands but with the dorsal surface touching the ground. She delved into the history of the problem telling the audience of how a drug she had taken during her pregnancy misshaped her future daughter’s limbs in utero. When questioned about the drug, she was unable to recall the name.
Her emotions upon first laying eyes on her daughter, after her birth, were conveyed so explicitly over the radio that, at that moment, I believe I heard my local cab driver’s sigh, trying to relieve the weight on his chest. She continued explaining how she had never been able to buy proper shoes to fit her and had to walk around barefoot on the streets of Santo Domingo. Despite all this, her daughter had not become emotionally incapacitated enough to be embarrassed to go to school. Even when her classmates ridiculed her odd appearance, she resisted discouragement and maintained hope of a successful therapy, which she eventually received from the hands of the orthopaedic team of Shriner’s Hospital, one of the groups that our AMSA chapter has had the privilege of working with in the Dominican Republic.
I realized what it was about her story that held the audience captive. It was the deep human emotion being communicated through thin air, mere invisible radio-waves. Her heartfelt story could not be driven out of my mind. It came to me then that though industrialized nations are, in fact, pioneers in the fields of Science and Engineering, they are, in some ways, irresponsible leaders in having released their products internationally without caution. Simultaneously, these third-world nations are partially at fault for their indiscriminate approval of the entrance of such products into their territory. Arising complications are innumerable and range from various pharmaceutical agents being delivered to the public in a deregulatory fashion to manufacturing plants, established by industrialized countries, being maintained unsupervised and in unsanitary conditions. We hear frequent CNN reports of FDA declining in efficiency, but one common situation not reported at all is of the absolute absence of a governmental body overlooking the quality of consumer products being imported from industrial nations. While we compel ourselves to keep pessimism and negative criticism at bay, one cannot help but imagine the adverse consequences of the rapidly evolving concept of globalization.
Sravani Mudumbi
Universidad Iberoamericana
Santo Domingo
Dominican Rebublic
lila1284@hotmail.com