Successful coupling of community attachment of health science students with relief work for drought victims.
BACKGROUND
Recurrent drought is a major disaster affecting many countries. As a result of poor rain fall a major drought was forecast for Ethiopia in 2003. The country appealed for support to avert drought-related health problems. University of Gondar decided to respond to the appeal by sending students and staff to selected drought-affected areas.


OBJECTIVE
To illustrate how an institution has turned the response to a natural disaster into a service-learning educational opportunity while maintaining equilibrium between the two.


METHODS
The drought relief response of the institute was twined with the regular team-training programme and academic schedule of senior health science students and 190 of them were transferred to deployment sites.


RESULTS
Students provided support for the national effort of reducing drought-related morbidity and mortality by participating in multifaceted public health and relief activities, and fulfilled their regular learning objectives at the same time.


CONCLUSIONS
This project demonstrated the use of a natural disaster as a learning method to expose students to a more realistic array of health problems and human conditions. It also demonstrated the feasibility of addressing social responsibility, while fulfilling academic responsibility through community-based approach.


CONCLUSIONS
Service-learning is a valuable learning method. Balancing the service and teaching objectives and maintaining the quality of both can be attained through careful twining of the objectives of both components.
Wondmikun
Yared
Y
College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia. ywondimkun@yahoo.com
Feleke
Amsalu
A
Tafete
Molla
M
D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D004190:Disasters; D005002:Ethiopia; D006281:Health Occupations / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D016730:Program Development / Q000379:methods; D012066:Relief Work / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods