Global Citizens Global Concern Public health perspectives shape new minor concentration written by Ashley Festa photography by Alyson Rose-Wood and Anh-Viet Dinh
American-born Alyson Rose-Wood ’03 nearly died of malaria in Morocco while volunteering with the Peace Corps. She’d contracted the disease several times growing up in Africa as the daughter of U.S. diplomats. Malaria is easily treatable in many African countries, including Ethiopia where she picked up the strain in 2003. However, the disease was assumed not to exist in Morocco, so doctors couldn’t diagnose her illness. They tried unsuccessfully to treat her for 10 days while she suffered a fever of 106 degrees. The malaria strain she contracted only takes hold when the patient has a weakened immune system. So when Rose-Wood caught
“It dawned on me that access to medicine isn’t equitable.” dysentery in 2004 after eating communal meals with a Moroccan host family, malaria also invaded her body. “Other Peace Corps volunteers came to my village and found me unconscious,” Rose-Wood said. The workers drove her two hours to another city, where she was properly diagnosed. Adequate care, however, was still six hours away in Morocco’s capital, Rabat. “They took me to a hospital to get really good treatments, which saved me,” she said. “Only because I was a Peace Corps volunteer did I have access to medicine to be treated. It dawned on me that access to medicine isn’t equitable.”
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