2008.08.13: August 13, 2008: Headlines: COS - Togo: Medicine: Public Health: Alpine Avalanche: Dr. Peter Davenport served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo
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2008.08.13: August 13, 2008: Headlines: COS - Togo: Medicine: Public Health: Alpine Avalanche: Dr. Peter Davenport served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo
Dr. Peter Davenport served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo
“The Peace Corps put me down in a tiny village with a pretty wide-open mandate to attack health issues” - water, cleanliness, etc., he said. “And then about half my time was spent working in the city, working with people who were fighting AIDS.We worked with them to reform procedures to meet international standards. That allowed them to get donors, doctors. “I got a lot out of it, a fantastic experience,” he added, “in terms of seeing another culture. “It’s a very, very poor area. But as a general rule, despite little money and short life expectancy, everyone seems to be enjoying life. These people work constantly, from sun-up to sundown, just to survive. You gain perspective from that.”
Dr. Peter Davenport served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo
A taste of rural medicine
Dr. Peter Davenport — from Peace Corps to Fort Worth hospital to Alpine.
By Mike Perry
If Dr. Peter Davenport’s one-month residency in Alpine is any indication, everything and everyone are connected.
Davenport is in Alpine taking what he termed a “rural elective” as part of the residency program of Fort Worth’s John Peter Smith Hospital (JPS).
He’s no stranger to at least one of the doctors at Alpine’s Pearce Clinic. Davenport and Dr. Adrian Billings knew each other while attending the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
After finishing in Galveston, Davenport headed off to the Peace Corps while Billings headed to JPS as a resident. When Davenport got back to the U.S., Billings was the head resident at JPS and helped Davenport enter the program.
Now, as his residency nears its end (Dec. 28), Davenport says he expects to enter general medicine, probably in a smaller city.
Alpine? Maybe.
Essentially, he’s spending a month in the Alpine program.
“It’s been great,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of [Pearce Clinic] work with Dr. Billings, a couple of C sections with Dr. James Luecke” and many more procedures.
“The scope of things I’ve done in a week and a half have been very impressive,” he said.
Davenport grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Churchill High. After that, he went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, picking up a bachelor of arts in neuroscience, which, he says, is “basically the study of the human brain and its interaction with the body. … I guess I always had the idea I was headed toward medical school.
“And neuroscience overlapped so much with the prerequisites applying to med school.”
Two years with the Peace Corps in Togo - “a tiny sliver of a country in sub-Saharan Africa” - came next.
“I don’t know if had a particularly specific inspiration to go into the Peace Corps,” he said. “I kind of had a general sense that I’d been on a course toward medicine, but I felt like I had to do some work that wasn’t simply getting ready for that.
“I was born lucky as far as where I lived and my family, so I guess I wanted to give back a little, see if I could use what I’d been given. And, quite frankly, see the world and a different culture.
“The Peace Corps put me down in a tiny village with a pretty wide-open mandate to attack health issues” - water, cleanliness, etc., he said.
“And then about half my time was spent working in the city, working with people who were fighting AIDS.We worked with them to reform procedures to meet international standards. That allowed them to get donors, doctors.
“I got a lot out of it, a fantastic experience,” he added, “in terms of seeing another culture.
“It’s a very, very poor area. But as a general rule, despite little money and short life expectancy, everyone seems to be enjoying life. These people work constantly, from sun-up to sundown, just to survive. You gain perspective from that.”
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Headlines: August, 2008; Peace Corps Togo; Directory of Togo RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Togo RPCVs; Medicine; Public Health
When this story was posted in August 2008, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: Alpine Avalanche
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