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Mothers and their sick babies might have to wait up to 48 hours in this South African clinic to see a physician, said James Coffin, director of the Center for International Programs who visited the country in January.
A South African mother comforts her baby. (Photos by James Coffin)
"Probably the most profound experience we had was visiting the wards of the terminally ill, especially in the pediatric units," said James Coffin. "I did not see deaths myself, but many of the students did. Death was all around us. We were in one village clinic where 25 people die each day from AIDS."
Coffin recently returned from the two-week trip sponsored by the National Youth Leadership Forum, a Washington, D.C. educational program offering field course experience in other countries to pre-professional students in the fields of medicine, law, diplomacy and environmental studies.
Coffin's delegation of 60 pre-med students represented 33 states.
Following a national search, Coffin was chosen as one of the two leaders of the medical group because of his anthropological and cross-cultural background.
Coffin has a faculty rank in the Department of Anthropology and for many years has led Ball State students to historical Native American sites in the Southwest and Northwest, which sensitize students to contemporary issues such as health delivery. Also, every spring he takes a group of Ball State nursing students and faculty on a field study where they provide health care in rural areas of Jamaica.
In South Africa, Coffin's group visited village and urban hospitals and clinics and interviewed AIDS and tuberculosis patients.
They also met with traditional healers, who in South Africa must be trained, licensed and accredited so they can work with physicians and nurses.
"These traditional healers are very important because the majority of South African people go to a healer first," he explained. "They are the liaison between the South Africans and the medical community."
Educating healers and patients about diseases, especially AIDS, is far from easy. The official government policy is that HIV and AIDS are not related.
"That denial is guiding their budget and government policy banning the use of AZT in government hospitals," Coffin said. "Using AZT, which is a drug that reduces mother-to-child transmission of AIDS, is against the law. Hospitals are being asked to suspend doctors who prescribe it. The medical community is being forced to go underground there."
The situation is complicated by the poverty of most victims and the dangerous myths circulating among a misinformed public. One common myth is that AIDS victims who have sex with a virgin will be healed.
"Acting on these myths, babies and young girls are being raped by people with AIDS," Coffin said.
Despite the overwhelming medical and social problems, Coffin said the human spirit the South African medical community displayed heartened the American students.
"They were so taken by the devotion of the healthcare givers who do the most they can with what they have," he said. "Many of them are planning to devote one month a year to these kinds of programs when they become doctors."
(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Coffin at jcoffin@bsu.edu or (765) 285-5422.)
