Travel Awards: Cairo with Iona M

Pupil Iona shares her experience in Cairo thanks to a Lancing College Travel Award:

Spending August at the convent clinic in Cairo was a challenging experience that permanently reshaped my understanding of poverty and its detrimental effects. During my stay, I helped treat patients from the city’s poorest areas, whose injuries and illnesses were severe and often neglected because they could not access affordable healthcare. The stark contrast between the lives of the patients in the clinic and those in the wealthy communities I also encountered, offered me a new perspective on inequality and the social determinants of health; I have since taken interest in this topic and researched it myself. 

At first, the intensity of the work was overwhelming. The powerful heat, combined with the smell and sheer reality of untreated wounds made my first week in the clinic particularly difficult; I felt ill-equipped to deal with the sight of so much pain and vulnerability. Moreover, my initial struggle to communicate in foreign languages (German and Arabic) led to a feeling of isolation. 

With time, I became accustomed to the influx of hundreds of patients each day, many of whom were young children and babies. I began by wrapping up fingers and toes – essentially the simplest tasks, but I was surprised by the difficulty of wrapping a bandage without dropping it! I steadily improved, and although it took time for me to feel at ease treating raw flesh and infected wounds, I eventually surmounted that challenge too. By the last few days, I had gained confidence to treat the most critical wounds; I cleaned them, prepared the dressings as I had been taught and comforted the patients in basic Arabic. The smell was no longer a consideration of mine and I learnt to channel my empathy to support patients, rather than becoming overwhelmed by it.  

My experience in Cairo was demanding and certainly eye-opening to global issues that previously only seemed to exist in media. It was also rewarding and as I came to recognise the regular patients, I was delighted to witness some make progress.