UofL Med students: Eating bugs and providing health care in remote areas

Forty-four students from UofL's School of Medicine are traveling this summer, providing medical care to hundreds of people in some of the most remote areas of the globe.

The second-year medical students travel with and learn from UofL faculty as part of the Global Education Program, directed by Bethany Hodge.

Hodge says students and faculty are setting up "pop up primary care centers" in a rain forest in Ecuador, along the Amazon River in Brazil and in a rural part of Tanzania. People sometimes wait for hours in the hot sun to see the doctors and students from UofL.

"We're teaching them tropical medicine. We're teaching them social determinants of health and we're cultivating their compassionate heart for people who have less than they do," Hodge says.

The future doctors are also embracing an adventurous streak. "There's a lot of peeing in holes in the ground and eating bugs," Hodges says. "Those things really happen."

About 30 percent of the students in every UofL School of Medicine class go on a global health experience, which is a slightly higher average than most medical schools, according to Hodge.

Listen to the entire interview with Hodge on "UofL Today with Mark Hebert."