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| Students from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine experienced conditions in a developing country firsthand during a summer expedition to Peru. From left, Tamanna Patel, Kendra Anspaugh, Christine Scott and Ivy Wilson (above) visit the community of Pachacutec, a "squatter's town" on the outskirts of Lima. A traditional healer (below) teaches students to identify medicinal plants in the Amazon rain forest. From left: Megan Dietrich, Ivy Wilson, Kelli Wong, Claire Fung, Tamanna Patel and Kendra Anspaugh. |
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Tulane public health students got a firsthand look at a mountain, desert and rainforest this summer--all on a learning expedition to Peru.
The Health Office for Latin America of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine completed its first summer course in Peru this year. Valerie Paz Soldan, research assistant professor of international health and development and director of the Health Office for Latin America led 17 students on a course that took them throughout Peru during two weeks in July.
"The course was an introduction to health and development issues in a developing country, and covered a broad variety of topics--from infectious diseases to reproductive health to environmental health," says Paz Soldan.
Peru is ideal for the course. "It has three main geographic regions," says Paz Soldan. "There's the coast, a barren desert; the Andes, mountainous and severe; and then there's the dense Amazon rain forest. In a short amount of time, the students can go from one region to another and start understanding the links between geography and health as well as the interaction between development issues and health."
During four days in Lima, Peru's capital located on the coast, the group visited two shantytowns in different stages of development, a medical research laboratory set up for tuberculosis studies, one of the oldest public hospitals in Lima and several non-governmental and community organizations.
"One of our field trips was to a community called Pachacutec," says Paz Soldan. They ate lunch with locals at the community kitchen and visited the shantytown's health post.
During their three days in Iquitos, deep in the rain forest, they visited villages accessible only by boat.
"We spent the first two days on a trip down the Amazon," says Paz Soldan. At one village, a traditional healer took them into the rain forest to find and learn about medicinal plants.
They also learned about different medical cases during their visit to an Iquitos hospital, heard about a treatment program for sexually transmitted infections designed mostly for sex workers and visited the febrile research station at a U.S. Navy medical research facility.
"In Cusco, high in the Andes, we started with a scavenger hunt," says Paz Soldan. She sent the students out to observe and report on health practices around the city, such as food-handling practices in the local market. The class also visited a street children's shelter and a shelter for pregnant women.
The course was a success, says Paz Soldan, who wants to offer it on a regular basis. "I tried to give the students an overview of the types of work that public health professionals do in international settings, and give them ideas about what kind of opportunities they might be able to find in public health," she says.
