Public Health in South Africa
During the spring semester of my freshmen year, I decided to apply for the study tour Public Health in South Africa in order to further explore my interests in public health. Come winter break of 2014, after a full semester of learning about AIDS/HIV and their relation to public health, myself and eleven other students, accompanied by two UC College of Medicine doctors embarked on a study tour to South Africa in order to directly observe public health within a setting plagued by infectious disease.
Going through the semester already having been on one study tour with UC’s honors program, I was really excited to learn about Infectious Disease within the realm of public health and contrasting how health is treated here in the US and in other countries like South Africa. Throughout the semester we referenced a textbook and various articles about different HIV treatments being tested. Notably, I found out that many of these articles were written by the agencies that we would be visiting while in South Africa! In addition to this, each student in the course gave a presentation on some aspect of the culture of South Africa and how it related to Public Health. My presentation was over the impact of religion on the prevention and treatment of diseases like HIV.
The actual trip took place over winter break from December 9th-24th. After our 16-hour flight to Johannesburg, more affectionately known as Jo-Berg, where we were greeted by John and escorted to one of the guesthouses where we would stay for the duration of the trip. After our stay in Jo-Berg, we boarded yet another plane for Durban where we would spend most of the rest of our time in South Africa. During our time in these two places, we visited multiple clinics and one hospital where we would get lectures with the various researchers at the institutions and were then given the opportunity to ask questions and interact with some patients. Overall these experiences were truly edifying and illuminated how the health system in South Africa works. The most startling thing that I faced was the lack of funding that these hospitals and clinics had to deal with and how this impacted actual patient care. After these experiences every day we would come back to the guesthouse and play cards until it was time to go to bed. It was during this time where we students all got to actually become friends with each other. The last three days of the tour we spent at a game park. The primary purpose of this excursion was relaxation. During our time here, we took multiple jeep runs to go and see the animals that call South Africa home including elephants, giraffes, zebra, amongst many others.
Overall, I would say that this study tour was a great experience as it was full of various realizations and epiphanies about myself and the world of health. I think that this experience went much further than learning about book knowledge. For me, I was able to learn a lot about the culture I live in and the privilege that comes along with living in the US in association with our health system. By being able to examine my own culture, I feel that I can use this knowledge as I move into the health field as a physician.