Teen gets tour of Third World medicine - February 2015
WORTH IT: While she no longer wants to be a doctor, Anastasia O'Leary recommends the experience to others.
Standing feet away from wide-awake patients with their insides on display, it occurred to 16-year-old Anastasia O'Leary that she wouldn't find this kind of experience in New Zealand.
The Wanganui High School prefect was in her second week shadowing doctors in a hospital in Tanzania, and things were still taking her by surprise.
"They don't have, like, general anaesthetic," she said from her Springvale home.
"They only had local so the patients were always awake."
It was during her week in the surgery department of Morogoro Hospital in the southern highlands of Tanzania that Anastasia realised she didn't want to be a doctor after all.
She described seeing a baby with a face burnt from having boiling water spilled on it, as well as other horrible injuries and illnesses.
"I just kind of looked at the doctor. I thought in my mind, 'do I want to be in their place'? I just thought, no.
All the people with things wrong with them and no cure.
"It was just like sick kids but you couldn't really see what was wrong with them. I saw a 7-month-old baby die because it had malaria."
Seeing babies die was one of the hardest parts for Anastasia, who said malaria was rife in Tanzania.
She remembered the struggle to find oxygen for one child when a power cut left the hospital without electricity for hours.
An oxygen tank was found for the baby, and the students would come into the ward each day to check on it, but it died seven days later.
"It just happens all the time there," she said.
Anastasia was among a group of young students who headed to the East African country to follow doctors in the hospital and observe healthcare in a Third World country.
She was the only student from New Zealand on the trip, which cost $10,000 through Gap Medics, a company which provides the opportunity for students to get physician-shadowing experience.
"I was in the hospital for two weeks shadowing doctors around and just seeing what they do," she said.
"Watching the actual surgeries wasn't too bad. They were legit, they weren't dodgy."
While in Tanzania, Anastasia and the other students visited an orphanage as well.
"That was pretty shocking," she said.
"The kids were so happy but it was just like this big concrete place. No grass, no balls to play with - but the kids are so happy."
Despite deciding from the experience she did not want to be a doctor, Anastasia recommended Gap Medics to other students interested in medicine, and said it was experience they could not find in New Zealand.
"There's no way that they would let you be a metre away from surgery here.
"I just learned so much about different health things."
Instead of becoming a doctor, Anastasia felt herself drawn more towards medical research, and hoped to work on finding cures for some of the diseases she saw people fighting in the Morogoro Regional Referral Hospital.
"That would be really cool," she said. "I'm not great at science at school, I just really like the idea of being able to help."