Pritzker students on a medical mission
Instead of heading for the beaches of the Dominican Republic, this group of students journeyed inland for service and fellowship.
Treating rural Dominican children for everything from the sniffles to scabies, a group of students from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine spent an eye-opening two weeks on the island last summer, far from the usual college haunts of sand and surf.
“I’m used to it,” said Maria Fondeur, a sophomore in the College and a Dominican, referring to the dearth of health care in her native country. “But to the medical students, these were really shocking conditions.”
The students went to the Dominican Republic representing the Chicago chapter of a nationwide program called REMEDY—Recovered Medical Equipment for the Developing World. Each year, leadership of the Pritzker REMEDY torch is passed to incoming first-year students, who select a new mission project to complete the following summer.
Although REMEDY UChicago has existed since 1998, this April marks the first time the group will receive formal recognition when Yale School of Medicine presents it with an inaugural award for outstanding service in medicine. The Pritzker team was selected from more than 600 similar programs nationwide.
In the large city of Santiago, Fondeur, a physics and economics major, led the 23 medical students to her aunt’s home. There, the students divided their supplies for the next two weeks of work.
First-year medical student Jonathan Grinstein was among the eight students assigned to a rural village about an hour east of Santiago, called Moca. They worked with Dominican physician Ramón López and Minal Giri, a Chicago-based pediatrician and Pritzker alumnus, to set up a two-week health clinic where they helped treat more than 100 children with bacterial infections, scabies, worms and scleroderma, a skin disease.
“We inventoried all the drugs we came with,” Grinstein said, referring to the makeshift pharmacy the students created at the site. “Half of us passed out vitamins and topical creams while the rest of our group worked in triage.”
Santa Domingo
While Grinstein’s team was in Moca, another group headed to Santa Domingo’s urban hospitals where students recorded patients’ vitals and shadowed physicians conducting interviews and physical exams.
Visiting Salvador Gautier Hospital, the Hospital General Policia Nacional and the Hospital Amigo de la Ninez y las Madres allowed the students a glimpse into both private and public health care settings in a developing country.
“They experienced health care in a developing country where there’s still significant need,” Fondeur said. “The students might ask the doctors, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ but the truth is that, many times, there aren’t enough resources to go around.”
Farther down the coast, outside the southern province of Barahona, some of the students worked with the Health Justice Collaborative in communities situated among the sugar cane plantations, where they were charged with everything from weighing infants to planting a garden.
Partnering with another organization, Missiones Pax, students visited the provinces of La Vega and Monte Plata, where they set up health clinics with local doctors and University of Miami physician Marisela Jaquez.
To prepare for the clinics, the students collected more than $35,000, raising funds by auctioning off outings with medical school professors to restaurants and sporting events. The group’s speed-dating fundraiser at the Graduate School of Business attracted hundreds of graduate students.
Donations
The money raised was used to purchase more than a ton of supplies, including an EKG machine and medicines such as antibiotics and antiparasitics. Supplies also were donated by the Medical Center and Pari Respiratory Equipment Inc.
When the vitamins and surplus gauze pads ran out, the students presented one of the communities something that would last: an EKG machine.
“The medicines would go in four to six months,” Grinstein said. “We wanted to leave them something sustainable.”
By Megan Seery
