Student charity group heading to Ecuador
MEDLIFE will spend Spring Break giving communities access to education, medical care
By: Emily Southwick
Posted: 2/1/07
This March, one of the lesser-known student groups on campus, MEDLIFE, or Medicine, Education and
Development to Low Income Families Everywhere, will travel to Riobamba, Ecuador to partner with poor
communities to help them gain access to medical care and education. The trip is two weeks long, and
involves setting up daily "shop" in individual towns, usually inside of the largest school or community
building available.
"First, kids come [into the shop] and we take their height and weight," explained Juan Vanegas, a third-year
microbiology major and president of MEDLIFE at the University of Maine. "Then they go to the doctor, and
the dentist, and then they go to the pharmacy, and they get whatever they need. We’re providing health care;
just a check up."
Vanegas is very active in the group and speaks passionately about MEDLIFE’s work. During his first medical
trip, in May 2005, Vanegas met a boy named Darwin who was diagnosed as having a congenital heart defect
by a nurse on the trip. Coming from a poor family, Darwin had no chance at affording the surgery, but
MEDLIFE teams raised the funds necessary.
Vanegas traveled from Orono to Quito, Ecuador in May 2006 to be with Darwin during his heart surgery. He
recalled the trust-building process he and the MEDLIFE team had to go through to reassure Darwin’s family
that they would be able to help him, and that they were not stealing their money and taking advantage of them
before by performing unnecessary surgeries, as some doctors had done to poor people in the area before.
Vanegas remembers having dinner with Darwin’s family after the surgery and hearing the gratitude in their
voices.
"Thank you so much, we didn’t know whether to trust you or not, but we had no other choice," one family
member was quoted as saying.
Aside from working with extreme cases like Darwin, MEDLIFE helps the people of Ecuador gain the
necessary knowledge to bring them up to date on health information they might not know otherwise.
"The purpose of the missions is to support that education throughout the whole year," Vanegas said.
MEDLIFE was founded by Nick Ellis in 2005 after he spent his senior year of college living in Ecuador and
volunteering at a local hospital. Ellis established the group at UMaine, in association with the Dartmouth
Medical School. He explains that he has "always felt like people in Maine are pretty hard workers and stand
up for stuff that I think is important. All these other universities [around the country] have programs that take
their students to Latin America to learn about poverty, and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for UMaine students to do that."
He said his motivation in establishing MEDLIFE was "a combination of wanting to help people in Ecuador
and contribute to people’s lives, and [to] also create experiences for [UMaine] students to learn about
poverty."
The student trip in March will be followed up by another two-week trip to Riobamba in April by
professionals from Eastern Maine Medical Center, including nurses, a surgeon, and an anesthesiologist. After
the two missions are complete, MEDLIFE will spend the rest of the year fundraising to build a permanent
clinic in Riobamba.
Ellis encourages students to get involved and become educated about the subject of poverty. He said that he
and Vanegas want to propose the creation of a new minor in social inequalities and international health care
at UMaine. There are currently no definite plans, but Ellis said they are working toward it, and the idea is one
more thing that they are doing in an effort to further their cause.
"I was always looking for something that I could put some time [into], that I thought would be worthwhile,"
Vanegas said about MEDLIFE and their projects.
"I feel sort of a connection with the people, because I’m from Columbia, which is right above [Ecuador], so I
felt like I wanted to give back to the area I’m from."
Paige Marshall, a junior at UMaine, is participating in the March trip as well, which will be her first with
MEDLIFE. She is also part of a fundraising event being held at the Isaac Farrar Mansion on Feb. 9.
"It will be the first time MEDLIFE has put on an event to introduce ourselves to the Greater Bangor Area,"
Marshall explains. The event will include a cash bar, appetizers and a silent auction. For more information on
the fundraiser, contact Paige Marshall on FirstClass.
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