July 13, 2005: Headlines: COS - Peru: COS - Honduras: Medicine: Naturopathic Medicine: Arizona Republic: Honduras RPCV Phil Wazny on a medical mission to Peru
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July 13, 2005: Headlines: COS - Peru: COS - Honduras: Medicine: Naturopathic Medicine: Arizona Republic: Honduras RPCV Phil Wazny on a medical mission to Peru
Honduras RPCV Phil Wazny on a medical mission to Peru
A lot of the revelations were pleasant. He saw indigenous people putting to use the types of herbal treatments he studied in his naturopathic education, such as using chamomile tea to treat stomach upset. He also saw 80-year-old grandparents sprinting up hills that made him wheeze. Their secret, it turned out, was chewing the leaves of the coca plant, the source of cocaine. It helps fend off altitude sickness.
Honduras RPCV Phil Wazny on a medical mission to Peru
Med students on a mission
Naturopathic college sending 3 to 3rd World
Kate Nolan
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 13, 2005 12:00 AM
Scottsdale medical student Phil Wazny believes British Prime Minister Tony Blair wasn't dreaming at the G8 summit meeting last week. Wazny agrees that eradicating poverty and disease in Third World countries is possible.
"It will be difficult but possible. There are enough people with the same goals, and if they pull together, they can fulfill them," said Wazny, a fourth-year medical student at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe.
Wazny, 28, has provided health care in two developing countries, first as a Peace Corps worker in Honduras from 1999 to 2001 and last summer in Peru in a program set up through his school, which operates a naturopathic medical center on McDowell Road in Scottsdale.
Each summer Southwest sends students to developing countries to provide medical care in programs that enlist volunteer medical, osteopathic and naturopathic doctors to care for people who otherwise have little or no professional care.
[Excerpt]
Research can prepare volunteers for their communities, but surprises are likely, said Peru veteran Wazny, who found eye-openers despite his previous work in Honduras.
"When I got to Peru, I saw things I'd only seen pictures of in textbooks - leprosy, brittle bone syndrome and rickets. Reality wildly exceeded the number of patients I thought we'd see, more than 1,000 over two weeks," Wazny said.
He also didn't expect the variety of patients, from urbanites in Lima, small-town inhabitants and indigenous people in the Andes.
A lot of the revelations were pleasant. He saw indigenous people putting to use the types of herbal treatments he studied in his naturopathic education, such as using chamomile tea to treat stomach upset. He also saw 80-year-old grandparents sprinting up hills that made him wheeze. Their secret, it turned out, was chewing the leaves of the coca plant, the source of cocaine. It helps fend off altitude sickness.
Wazny, who worked side by side with medical and naturopathic doctors, learned that tickling wasn't native to his patients, but it caught on quickly among children.
"You'd take the kids' blood pressure or listen to their hearts, and you'd tickle them. Pretty soon, other kids would start lining up just to be tickled," he said.
But not every kid loved him. Once he was talking to a mother and noticed her 1 1/2-year-old was choking on an apple. He picked the baby up and dislodged the apple chunk with a good whack between her shoulder blades. Whenever he saw them again, the mother would thank him profusely, but the little girl would instantly scream.
Wazny and Cramer will graduate in December.
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Story Source: Arizona Republic
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Peru; COS - Honduras; Medicine; Naturopathic Medicine
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