Katharine Boyle - GHESKIO Clinics

 by Katharine Boyle Last summer I spent two months in Haiti working at GHESKIO, an HIV clinic, located in Port-au-Prince. I was interested in working at GHESKIO because it is a locally-run clinic, and its doctors have helped forge a path for providing HIV care in Haiti and other developing countries. Haiti has also had a great deal of political upheaval, and I knew that providing care in this setting would likely be difficult but also educational.   During my first few weeks, I rotated through several clinics that provided care to adolescents, children and adults with HIV, other STDs and TB. I met many Haitian doctors who were willing to teach me clinical skills and explain the intricacies of caring for these often very sick patients. Many patients required emotional, financial and nutritional support alongside medical treatment, so GHESKIO had evolved to combine these services. In addition, the clinic had to be efficient in order to deliver care to hundreds of patients each day. Physicians and other staff had to balance quality care for each patient with the goal of serving as many patients as possible.  The cervical cancer screening team- Charles, Katharine, Carol, and Dr. Bien-AimeThroughout the summer, I also worked on two projects. The first was a cervical cancer initiative, seeking to determine the prevalence of high risk HPV and cervical lesions among HIV positive patients. I assisted with the clinical aspects on a daily basis and also helped to compile the results. The other project focused on the costs of hospitalization for HIV positive patients who develop opportunistic infections. For this, I headed off to a nearby hospital and read charts, tabulating the costs of various treatments that patients received.  GHESKIO turned out to be an ideal place for learning about international health. Its physicians are actively involved in patient care and patient-centered research as well as broader health policy discussions. I saw how all of these aspects of health care are interrelated and why working closely with patients in need made GHESKIO doctors more knowledgeable and more credible when it came to formulating national health policy. As a student, I was particularly lucky that the clinic’s staff is enthusiastic about teaching people like me—they have developed a well-organized program for summer students and other visitors and volunteers. I was invited to help out and to ask questions, and I contributed what I could. In return, I learned about the dedication it takes to provide health care to Haitians in need and how rewarding it is to be a part of that effort. 

Katharine Boyle (MD'12) and Matthew Goodwin (PhD, MD'13)