By Megan Sullivan
Assistant Circulation Editor
As students across the Beach Cities rushed to the doctor’s with a case of the flu this holiday break, Mira Costa sophomore Becky and senior Emily Angiolini traveled across the world to provide free medical assistance to children who cannot afford visits to a doctor.
The sisters traveled to Myanmar for 10 days from Dec. 25 to Jan. 5, where they participated in Student Action Volunteer Effort Medical Missions and worked alongside doctors to help children in orphanages and monasteries in need of medical attention.
“Becky and I have always wanted to do a program like this where we can work with kids and volunteer to help them,” Emily Angiolini said. “We both love kids, and I have always been interested in the medical fields, so this program was a perfect combination of those two aspects.”
Photos: Angiolini sisters provide health care for children.
S .A.V.E. Medical Missions is an organization that works to bring healthcare to people in Burma and Myanmar who do not have access to medical attention otherwise. The program sends 10 teams of doctors, each with a guide, translators and eight teenage volunteers from the Los Angeles area. The program’s volunteer doctors are all professionals who work in various practices within the Santa Monica area.
“Although none of us volunteers knew each other going into the trip, we all got really close with one another because we live in the same areas and have pretty similar lives,” Becky Angiolini said. “The doctors were all very friendly and willing to teach us how to do everything so that we could learn about their fields.”
Becky and Emily traveled to a new orphanage or monastery every day and worked in different jobs depending on what was needed that day. There were different booths set up that specialized in ears, teeth, eyeglasses and pharmacy needs as well as a checkout station where they would record the children’s illnesses.
“Some days you are assigned as a scribe for the doctors so that you can write down what is happening with the kids,” Emily Angiolini said. “That is super cool because you actually start to feel like a doctor be-cause you begin to recognize which medicines go with each disease or how to treat a wound properly.”
The program has limited supplies due to the rules and regulations governing what is allowed to enter the country. Because of this, the volunteers must be able to improvise and create solutions from what they have. In one situation, Emily Angiolini had to make a cast out of tongue depressors and tape for a boy who broke his elbow.
“It was very tough to work with limited supplies because often children with severe diseases or breaks came in, and we could only do so much despite our desire to cure them,” Becky said.
Link: Forbes discusses the recent evolution of the current healthcare system in Myanmar.
Although Emily does not want to become a doctor when she graduates, she does want to find a way to continue to help those who are less fortunate and provide them with care, she said. Becky additionally says that as much as she enjoys the volunteer work that she does, she does not plan on pursuing a career in the medical field.
“The best part of this program is just get-ting to work and interact with the children Angiolini sisters provide health care for children because they are just so happy for all of the little things,” Emily said. “They have al-most nothing, but they are still such happy kids, and it is extremely eye-opening to be away from all the wealth we are surround-ed by at home.
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