By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
A local hospital will establish a medical school in Swaziland, which will be the first of its kind in the southern African country.
SAM Medical Center in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, said it has already established a local corporation there and gained approval for the project. The school is expected to receive its first 50 students in 2011.
Park Sang-eun, president of the center and executive secretary of the African Future Foundation, said the school will become a guiding light to underdeveloped countries in southern Africa. Swaziland marks the world's highest prevalence rate of HIV with 33.4 percent of the population afflicted with it, and a person's average lifespan there marks 33 years.
''We will select 25 students from Swaziland and another 25 from 14 other countries nearby that suffer from a lack of medical infrastructure,'' he told The Korea Times.
The African Future Foundation, run by the medical center, is ''modernizing'' the 80-year-old Nazarene Health Institutions hospital to use it as the university hospital for students to train and work at. Guesthouses are already built to accommodate them.
''The foundation will dispatch a couple of doctors in April as field directors and seven more will go there next year with their families as professors,'' Park said.
The local government is quite supportive and SAM, with a sisterhood network with McCord hospital in South Africa, has gained trust from neighboring countries, he said.
''A long time ago, we received some Western medicine from outside and now it's time for us to share our high-quality medical service with others,'' he said.
The African Foundation has invested 10 billion won for the project and expects donations from other groups and countries. The hospital foundation has also established branches in Canada, the U.S. and Britain.
''I once told Britons that they should take some responsibility for the poor infrastructure in the land because it was once their colony. They seemed to agree with us,'' Park said. ''The medical school will become a guiding post for African medicine,'' he added.
SAM has always been passionate about international service. Aside from making sisterhood relations with 14 hospitals worldwide and sending annual medical volunteer staff to different countries, the center has recently made pacts with the embassies of Paraguay, Afghanistan and Laos in Korea to admit their nationals to the hospitals at low prices. ''We receive the real costs only, which give the patients ― who are mostly contract workers working in manufacturing ― relief,'' Park said.
Unlike many large hospitals in the metropolitan area focusing on inducing patients from so-called developed countries, SAM is doing the opposite.
''I know there are tens of hospitals out there seeking for foreign patients who can bring them money and reputation. But we are seeking patients without money but are in need of us,'' Park said.
He was prudent about the medical tourism boom. ''It will be a great opportunity for us and for all hospitals. We have state-of-the-art facilities ready for patients, but at the moment, we should concentrate on the foreign patients in Korea who need us,'' Park said.
SAM was established in 1967 as Anyang Hospital. After changing its name in 2004, the center has grown into a general hospital with 150 doctors and 300 nurses and has trained dozens of medical students from Mongolia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
bjs@koreatimes.co.kr