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UCLA Engineering Students
Travel to Thailand to Build Health Clinic
Engineers Without Borders Training Internationally Responsible
Students
By Christopher Sutton
In the remote hill tribe settlement of Samli, Thailand, access to health care has always been very limited. The nearest doctor is miles away, and the villagers have little or no transportation to reach medical facilities in the regional capital. People with a life threatening illness would travel up to a week to reach a treatment center.
But this August, the village of Samli opened its own health clinic, thanks to the efforts of a team of students, including six from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The students were part of a joint effort by UCLA, Columbia University and the University of Maryland to build a ten-room health clinic, staffed by a live-in doctor, complete with examination rooms, a lab, pharmacy, overnight room and living quarters.
The six students from UCLA - Jonathan Hogstad, Lisa Jambusaria, Ismael Nawfal, Regina Quan, Diego Rosso and Philip Wegge - arrived in Samli in late June, after a grueling 24-hour journey that included three flights and a long drive through jungle mountain terrain.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Hogstad, who graduated this year with a mechanical engineering degree, “but the people we met really went above and beyond to take us in and show us who they were, to open up to us.”
The students are members of the UCLA chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA). Established in 2000, EWB-USA is a non-profit organization that implements environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects in developing areas of the world.
The village of Samli is populated by the Lisu people, ethnic Chinese migrants who had come from across the Burmese border, settling in the mountains to farm the jungle hillsides. The village has a population of about 150 people, making it the largest settlement in the region and the only one with electricity and a phone.
The UCLA Chapter of EWB was founded in 2002, and has roughly a dozen active members. Wegge, an environmental engineering Master’s student, has been chapter president since 2003.
“As an engineering student I felt I needed something more than just classroom work,” said Wegge. “I wanted the hands-on experience, and more importantly, I wanted to help communities that are less fortunate than ours.”
EWB-USA projects usually involve the design and construction of key infrastructure systems, such as sanitation and energy production plants. For their project in Thailand, the UCLA students were supported by contributions from the host community, a grant from General Motors and UCLA engineering alumnus Richard Gay, who has been a long-time supporter of student projects.
Columbia University students traveled to Thailand in May to construct the frame and roof of the clinic before the UCLA students arrived to finish the inside of the hospital, including the electrical plant, plumbing and water lines, insulation, ventilation, siding and interior walls.
Each day, two professional engineers assigned the students tasks according to a master construction plan, and local workers assisted with digging and other jobs. For some of the students, the work was a new experience.
“There were people who had never touched a tool and others who had building experience, although everybody showed a large ease with the tools,” said Rosso, an environmental engineering graduate student, who gained experience in plumbing and carpentry from working with his father on the family home in Italy. “They learned right away how to use them and be independent. It was remarkable.”
The students worked nine and ten hour days, and though the hours were long, the work was not monotonous.
“I got to do a bit of everything,” said Quan, a third-year civil engineering student from Walnut, California. “When you’re done one task, you’re given another. Basically, our goal was to get as much done in the time we had.”
Throughout the life of the project, everyone was keenly aware that their efforts had to be in service to the Thai villagers, and that any engineering solution had to match local customs.
“We had to understand what these people need,” said Rosso. “We could not just go in and say, ‘you have a problem and we know how to fix it because we are engineers.’ That’s not the way it works.”
The UCLA chapter of Engineers Without Borders is planning a trip next year to Tibet. For more information, visit the chapter’s web site at http://www.seas.ucla.edu/ewb/. For more on their work in Samli, please visit http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/ewb.htm.
Photos appear courtesy of the UCLA chapter of Engineers Without Borders.
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