Agree on both counts.
I've been to Haiti-my family visited in the 1980s when I was a kid-and there's no doubt it's a suffering country. There is nothing anyone is going to do on a week long visit to turn around the kind of poverty that exists there. It's going to take decades, maybe centuries. So assuming you're not one of the few people looking to take Haiti on as a lifelong project, better to use your limited time/financial resources to support those who are.
Again, there's no need to go abroad to find people living in poverty. Here in the South, you can't go anywhere without seeing it. The free clinic I'm volunteering at serves mostly migrant workers and others with low-skill jobs, no health insurance, and limited English. It would be a great gig for people interested in helping the underserved; we actually have some premeds working there in various capacities. Including interpreting Creole, which I don't think any of the docs speak.
Agreed. Mostly, the potential benefits go to the person investing whatever time to look, full-0n, on real life struggles outside the US. Are there people in need here? Absolutely. That's not the point of getting a taste of some global health--as you may have touched on in your experience there. So many in N America can't appreciate real struggles and suffering on a larger scale outside of the bubble, that is, the USA. Are there people suffering and hurting here? Yep. I have worked with them for decades now. Overall, the impact is not massively and often individually the same. Opportunities for help may be slow and problematic in the US, but they are much better here than many places. Haiti is one of those places.
So I say if the OP or another had/has a TRUE interest in getting some real life global health experience, I say go for it. If it is just something to do for an application, well, obviously that's bogus. I am sure you found your trip to Haiti as eye-opening. There is no quick or easy fix to Haiti's struggles. Interestingly, on the other side, there sets the Dominican Republic, which does not suffer from the same amount of blight and desperation, in general. It's really fascinating.
I'm looking at the experience as one of learning from a global health and human perspective. It could be a priceless experience for this person, which they would carry with them going forward in their life as both a physician and a human being. That's all I'm saying.
Having said ALL of that; it seems kind of clear from the OP's post that it's not something that they may have a passion or real interest, which is a shame. That seemingly the case for OP, all the other responses, including yours are fair and practical.
Of course, you seem fundamentally more pragmatic than I am.
😉 I like to learn of human experience for learning's sake. Amidst all the BS in healthcare over the years, I'm still a poet at heart. But I'm a glass half full kind of person. It's usually a pain in my butt being so, because there is often significant resistance to such a philosophy. I struggle with all the realities and suffering--both the unchangeable and needless suffering. Still, I refuse to give in to a more fatalistic type of mentality--unlike my brother, who studied chem engineering--and is practical to the point of fatalism many times. He still gives me a hard time about my idealism. I've had to learn to balance it with the hard realities. It's tough. Damn right-brain gene!
