Sirens and Lights

Guess who’s heading back to Brasil?! I’m sitting here, wrapping up my first year of med school, armed with tickets back to Rio in just 2.5 short weeks….

I’ll be leaving May 15th for Rio, where I’ll spend 6 weeks working with the Johns Hopkins’ Center for TB Research/Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic (CREATE).

….then, I’m heading to South Africa…details on that to come

The United Nations
Commission on Human Rights
April 15, 2005

In a resolution (E/CN.4/2005/L.28) on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, adopted as orally revised and by a roll-call vote of 52 in favour to one against, with no abstentions, the Commission urged States to take steps, individually and through international assistance and cooperation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of their available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; and called upon the international community to continue to assist the developing countries in promoting the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including through financial and technical support as well as training of personnel, while recognizing that the primary responsibility for promoting and protecting all human rights rests with States.

The Commission encouraged States to recognize the particular needs of persons with disabilities related to mental disorders, as well as their families, including by reflecting their needs in national health and social policies, such as national poverty reduction strategies; and called upon them to place a gender perspective at the centre of all policies and programmes affecting women’s health. They also called upon States to protect and promote sexual and reproductive health as integral elements of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and decided to extend, for a period of three years, the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the right to everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

The result of the vote was as follows:

In favour (52): Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bhutan, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, China, Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe.

Against (1): United States.

David Hohman (United States), speaking in explanation of the vote… said the United States believed that while the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights required government action, those rights were not an immediate entitlement to a citizen.

http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYear_en)/0DC62B805E191CF7C1256FE40050A75D?OpenDocument

from a journal entry 3 months into medical school, sort of a progress report i never quite got around to posting….new update coming soon….For now, I’ll just say—YAY! Going back to Brazil and then to South Africa this summer! Details to come on those two events, as well….suffice it to say that I’m ecstatic!

Nov. 5, 2004 What kind of doctor do I want to be? Being in medical school has been an experience so far. We’ve muddled through hours in anatomy lab, log hours in the case rooms and library, and of course the obligatory celebrations following a long test (hopefully) well done. The 134 of us in my first year class at PSUCOM spend the better part of our lives locked up in well-lit rooms, shivering in the artificial air trying to convince ourselves to power through another hour of the subject du jour. Looking at us from the outside, we must be quite a sight, marching en masse between lecture hall and cadaver lab, slamming shut our teeny yellow, anatomy lockers and surreptitiously changing in the hallway into gumby-green scrubs before snapping on gloves and heading up to the partially dissected human bodies three floors above. As we run up the steps (we’re not allowed to take the elevator because the administration doesn’t like the smell), and race into the laboratory to vie for the attention of professors carefully navigating us through the body parts, our eagerness is probably a little disturbing. And during exams, as we dutifully rotate through the 25 bodies (2 people per body) to the beep of an alarm that sounds every 90s, prodding and poking in an attempt to identify the tagged structures, it is perhaps an odd dance, but one that has been well worn by our predeceesors in medical community.

When I first arrived at medical school, fresh from my year abroad, the entire “experience” of it all really surprised me…in an email to a friend, I wrote the following:

“It’s interesting- when you interview for medical school, people always ask you why you want to attend medical school and so many of us answer having translated the question into, ‘why do you want to be a doctor?’ Medical school, however, is more than just learning to practice medicine, to helping people. It’s four years dedicated to transforming you- all young, unprofessional, idealistic you- into a physician, someone who attacks problems in certain ways, looks at people in certain ways, treats information in certain ways, has dissected a dead human being. As one doctor joked yesterday, ‘you will be processed like sausages by the end of this!’ They constantly refer to the “community and brotherhood of doctors” that we have recently joined through our commencement of medical school, and even talk about the price of initiation (tuition and long hours of cadavers and libraries). We will be ‘doctors,’ and it’s more than a profession; it’s an identity. I think that when I was in frosh and sophomore year of college, I found a lot of comfort in that, in not having to figure out who I was right away because I would have an identity through my profession. I’m not sure when exactly that changed, though I guess it must of been before senior year of college because I was already a little frightened of going into medicine then. Somewhere along the line, though, I think that’s the part that’s started to scare me most- losing my identity. It’s one thing to become a physician with the skills and experiences involved, but I entered medicine as the person I am now with the reasons I have now and I’m a little worried that if I turn out like many of the doctors I’ve seen this year, I’m not sure how I’m going to be happy- and almost scared of the person I would be if I was happy that way. I don’t even think I’m that mutable a person, but who knows….I’ve met so many people that have changed their entire value systems during their twenties and thirties.”

Looking back now, three months into this endeavor, I’m happy to say that I haven’t lost any of the passions I developed while on my year away. In fact, I think that this time has truly reaffirmed to me not only that I want to become a physician, but why this is the right path for my life, and most likely will continue to be. What I have realized, though, is an idea of a completely different stream—as I observe my peers in our matching green scrubs at work, it strikes me how diverse we, in reality, are. Medicine means so many varied and even conflicting things to each individual who pursues it, and even the seemingly innocuous “Why do you want to be a doctor?” is a question fraught with personal priorities and expectations– quite in contrast of the perfunctory, “To help people,” with which most prospective students dutifully respond. I was worried about losing myself, but I’m realizing how unlikely it is that this will happen–and that if it does, it’ll likely be with good reason. For now, I’m happy to have reaffirmed my rationale for being here, and to have begun to find a community in which to maintain my passion for my dreams–and to be finally done with anatomy!