AMSC – Stigmatized Illness and H1N1
Mixing cultures at the AMSC
Today’s blog is a report from the 30th Asian Medical Students’ Conference, written by Tsu-Yu Chen, Peng-Sheng Ting and Yaolin Lee, members of the AMSC 2009 Organising Committee. This year’s conference focussed on the neglected impact of stigmatized illness and experienced some first-hand effects of the emergence of H1N1.
Thirty years ago, a group of passionate Asian medical doctors gathered in Thailand in hopes of helping the country’s refugees. This was the beginning of AMSC, the Asian Medical Students’ Conference. Thirty years later, from July 25th to August 1st of 2009, the passion extends to our 30th AMSC held on a most vivacious Formosa Island – Taiwan. The same fervor that drove those pioneering medical students to Thailand still passes on year after year. The difference this year no doubt lies in the increase in scale of AMSC activities, with 480 students now attending the 30th AMSC in Taiwan. In addition to lectures, group discussions, and the paper and poster competitions that were traditional to past conferences, the academic department this year has added a movie gallery category as well. Each of these contests highlights the ability and motivation of delegates across the Asia Pacific Region. Aside from these academic pursuits, we’ve not forgotten to introduce our beautiful island to our visiting delegates. Among our arrangements, Taipei Adventure and Taroko National Park Tour were refreshing inclusions to our activities in addition to the riveting cultural night festivities and opening and farewell parties!
This year, we focus on a subject that has been grossly overlooked in the past – Stigmatized Illness. Patients who suffer from leprosy, epilepsy, AIDS, infertility, mental illness and many more have had to bear societal prejudices and stereotypes in conjunction with their physical ailment. To our surprise, the greatest wish of these patients is not to be cured, but to be free from the fear of letting others know of their conditions. This unexpected observation should be seriously considered by medical students who will become future doctors. This year, AMSC not only aims to provide delegates knowledge that is inaccessible from a textbook or in the classroom, but also provide different perspectives on disease, on patients, as well as on ourselves as future medical professionals. Ultimately this gives delegates new paradigms when facing stigmatized patients who deserve better treatment from doctors and society.
The emergence of the H1N1 virus was an unexpected event for this year’s AMSC, yet it provided a firsthand experience on stigmatization for us all. This novel Influenza first began to wreak havoc in the first days of the conference but fortunately was quickly contained. Through the combined efforts of both staff and effected delegates, the spread of the flu was swiftly curbed. Strangely, though it first appeared as a curse in a time when we could have had a trouble free week, it did give us the opportunity to truly experience stigma first hand. It will be hard to forget that feeling of being rushed through the hotel onto the buses with our masks on, for fear that we would be seen by other hotel guests. Prejudice and bigotry was abound from those passing by us, alarmed and terrified by what may ail us from beneath our masks. We thank all of our AMSA friends who were willing to share this lesson with us and use our friendships towards de-stigmatization of diseases in all regions of Asia, and to make this world a little easier to live in.