Leah Yingling

Leah Yingling immersed herself in the Northeastern South African culture for five weeks while studying global health, conducting a research project and living life through the eyes of the Venda people. She studied infectious disease and access to healthcare in a multidisciplinary setting by gaining knowledge through lectures, home‐based care workers, interviews with healthcare providers, and conversations with healthcare users. She learned about South Africa's socioeconomic situation and how it has dramatically changed in the past decade because of the abrupt transition from an Apartheid government. During Apartheid, the goal was to secure White control and promote racial separation by classifying all South Africans into ethnic categories. She studied the intricacies of policy and, how prior to 1994, the government established a segregated employment system in which race was the qualifying factor, thus allowing for legal discrimination and many other injustices. Leah’s research and global health studies were set on the foundation that apartheid laws and policies affected all aspects of a citizen's life, including the health sector. She traveled to Bushbuckridge, a municipality that was declared a ‘poverty node’ by the South African government. In Bushbuckridge, she traveled with home‐based care workers to deliver medication to, have conversations with and experience the adversity faced by those who receive home‐based care. She found that the poor infrastructure of the rural South African society is sometimes just as debilitating as the disease itself. In Bushbuckridge and in Sanari village, her third research spot, she gained exposure to true diseases of poverty including tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDs. She was intrigued by the pluralistic nature of disease in the South African culture. By visiting with several traditional healers and herbalists along with visits to private and public hospitals, she compared modes of treatment and categories of the population treated. It was evident from these experiences that the public health sector treats over 75% of the population, yet receives less than half the appropriate funding. This inequity was demonstrated in the care provided to rural villages. During her homestay in Sanari village, Leah conducted a research project on disability and the availability and accessibility of care. Through her research and conversations with her homestay family, she observed that disability was defined solely as physical limitations by the majority of the Sanari population and care providers. The discrepancy existed when the population saw mental and learning limitations as disabilities, yet there were no services for this population. From this experience, Leah is looking to dedicate her next two years to a health clinic in an underserved area where she can encourage awareness about disease and disability.