Privilege and Sacrifice
Medical Student Helps Fight HIV/AIDS in Thailand
A Fulbright scholarship, and her passionate commitment to the fight against
HIV/AIDS, took Tanyaporn Wansom to Thailand for a year after she graduated from
Swarthmore College. The need in her parents’ native land was great, and
her fluency in Thai would be useful.
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Tanyaporn Wansom with HIV patients in a village in northern Thailand |
Wansom worked as a translator for foreign doctors at an HIV/AIDS clinical trial
site, volunteered as a pre-test and post-test HIV counselor at a large public
hospital, and taught HIV education and English to commercial sex workers. In
her daily clinic visits, she asked questions about each clinical trial, answered
patients’ questions, and educated them about the side effects of their
medicine and how to deal with their disease.
At the hospital, she gave people their test results.
“I cried,” Wansom says. “I held people’s hands. I helped
people tell their partners, and went with them to get tested.”
She also came to believe in the value of international health care experiences
for students. “They need to appreciate how people provide health care
in resource-poor settings,” she says. “How can you do anything if
you don’t have an MRI or a CT-scan machine? But 95 percent of the world
doesn’t. You gain respect for those clinicians. They can’t get something
just by filling out a form.”
In the summer of 2004, Wansom returned to Thailand to work in grassroots education
and outreach with the Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group and the Thai Drug Users
Network, and attended the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok. And she’s
now the global HIV/AIDS coordinator for the American Medical Student Association.
“I grew up in very privileged circumstances,” she says, “and
I think that you should use your privilege. Many youth these days no longer
recognize that sacrifices were made so they could be where they are today. I
believe I should take advantage of the opportunities I have, to help make those
sacrifices worthwhile.”
—JM
Also:
Two-Way Street
Decision-Making Strategies of the Mam Mayans
Privilege and Sacrifice
The Quito Project
‘Pre-emptive Strike’
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