Beyond Borders: UW student practices medicine home and abroad

In Ethiopia, nearly half of all medical students leave the country for a better economic future abroad. Not many vow to return home — but Eden G-Sellassie is one exception.

Health care in Ethiopia has been considered primitive and scarce by many worldwide organizations. The chronic droughts, high illiteracy and poverty rates and ongoing armed conflicts there have created an almost non-existent health care system, according to Doctors Without Borders, a global nonprofit organization.

United Ethiopian Services reported that there is one doctor for every 78,700 people in Ethiopia, while the United States has one doctor per 470 people.

University of Washington G-Sellassie immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia eight years ago. She experienced the importance of medicine in Ethiopia when a doctor there saved her life.

G-Sellassie was a 7-year-old with a freckled face. She often wore her long black hair in braids that bounced on her shoulders as she and two childhood friends jumped rope outside her home. One day, in the middle of the girls’ play, G-Sellassie collapsed onto the sidewalk, gasping for air.

Her mother, Abeba, brought her inside where she lay still, unable to move because of the pressure building within the right side of her abdomen.

Despite her worry, G-Sellassie’s mother was unsure about bringing her daughter to the hospital and instead called the neighborhood elders for advice.

Upon the elders’ suggestion, she brought in a traditional medicine man who tended to G-Sellassie for several days, rubbing fragrant herbs and oils on her swelling belly. As her condition worsened, her mother worried whether her immediate instinct to bring her daughter to the hospital was right.

However, the elders of her community continued to assure her, saying, “She’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

Abeba knew she could not disrespect the wisdom of the elders and continued to keep her daughter at home.

Four days later, G-Sellassie’s father returned from his business trip to find her skin turning blue. Without consulting the elders, he picked up his daughter and took her to the hospital.

After a few tests and a diagnosis, Dr. Yemame performed a life-saving surgery to remove her appendix. Without this immediate surgery the doctors informed G-Sellassie’s family that her appendix would have ruptured, which could have led to an infection or even death.

Within a week she had made almost a full recovery.

To this day, G-Sellassie credits Yemame not only with her life but with her decision to attend medical school and her goal of someday returning to Ethiopia to provide care for children like herself.

“There was no question about it,” G-Sellassie said, thinking back on her decision. “I knew I wanted to be a doctor.”

Ethiopia has three medical programs, while the United States has 150. Only the richest of students can afford the programs because they must be paid for in cash.

In 1995, when G-Sellassie was just 13, her father won a lottery green card to work in the United States. He decided to take the opportunity, leaving his country in hopes of finding a better alternative for his family.

It soon became clear to him that the educational opportunities in the United States were well worth the relocation to a foreign land. In 2000, G-Sellassie and her family joined him in Seattle.

At 17, G-Sellassie completely restarted her schooling, entering the ninth grade at Ingraham High School. Although English was her second language, she excelled in the sciences and graduated in the top 5 percent of her class. She was then accepted to the UW, and became one step closer to her goal of becoming a doctor.

Seven years passed and G-Sellassie’s passion to reach her goal was beginning to flicker because she missed her home deeply.

She returned to Ethiopia with her father for three months after her sophomore year of college.

While there, she briefly became involved with the health care system, and for the first time experienced the joys of helping people in such great need, she said.

A new hospital was built near her home, and she investigated it a few weeks into her trip. A security guard stood outside the gate to the building and informed her that the hospital was not accepting patients yet. Peeking through the fence, she saw something that elevated her curiosity: a white female doctor. Probing further, she discovered that doctors were training at the hospital, and that the woman was an Italian dermatologist working with Doctors Without Borders.

G-Sellassie later returned to the hospital and asked the Italian doctor if she could volunteer there. After a few weeks of job shadowing, she was allowed to clean wounds and help with some minor procedures.

The student was frequently called on to translate illnesses and treatment plans to patients who didn’t speak English. “I took charge and felt like I was actually doing my wanted profession,” G-Sellassie said.

One day, she saw Yemame. The doctor, now an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, instantly remembered her name and diagnosis. “Eden G-Sellassie, the young girl with an appendicitis,” he recalled. She was proud to tell him that she was attending school to become a doctor, and he had nothing but motivating words for the pre-medical student.

G-Sellassie’s passion re-ignited. Now a junior majoring in Public Health with a minor in Global Health, she is unsure when she will be able to visit Ethiopia again. Yet she vows that after graduation she will return home and join Doctors Without Borders to help the feeble medical system.

“I want to assist those who need it most,” she said.

[Reach reporter Chantal Anderson at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]