Twenty-three-year-old Delta Effendy was a leader long before the tsunami tore through his neighborhood in the Aceh Province of Indonesia. Three and a half years ago, he enrolled at Fakultad Kedokteran Universitas Syiah Kuata, the main medical university in Banda Aceh, with the goal of becoming a family physician in a region desperate for health care capacity.
Now, with an estimated 80% of the city’s health workers dead or missing, Delta’s skills are in greater demand than ever. But he and more than 100 other medical and nursing students, having lost their homes or parents or both and struggling with the attendant economic hardships, are in jeopardy of being forced to drop out of school with only months left before graduation.
Faculty from medical schools all over Indonesia have offered to accept the students as guests in their homes, but with only a single surviving parent or dependent siblings, most of the students are not able to leave the city.
“I lost 18 relatives, including my grandmother and grandfather,” Delta says. “I had been living with my parents, but their house is 80% damaged. They will be living with me now.”
Fortunately, the medical school recently announced that it will waive tuitions for affected third- and fourth-year students when the school reopens, perhaps in March or April. Still, each student will continue to have living expenses, which in U.S. dollars might seem nominal but in Indonesian rupiah are quite high.
“It will cost only about $83 per month to cover each student’s books, transportation and clinical supplies,” explains Neil Joyce, International Medical Corps’ medical director in Aceh. “This is a bargain to get doctors and nurses out of school and into practicing medicine.”
To that end, International Medical Corps has set up a special fund to help senior medical and nursing students complete their education. A donation of $1,000 will cover one student’s living expenses for an entire year.
It seems a small price to pay in exchange for their dedication. Delta works almost every day from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. or later in the emergency room of Zainoel Abidin Hospital, translating for International Medical Corps volunteers and receiving training in emergency medicine.
His dream of becoming a doctor includes one day studying orthopedic surgery in the United States, but, as the vice president of his school’s medical student association, he understands and accepts the responsibility that has suddenly been thrust on him and his classmates.
“On the one hand, I want to finish my medical school and be a doctor in normal conditions,” Delta says. “On the other hand, it is a fact that the tsunami happened here. We are the future of health in Banda Aceh…and we know that.”