| Susan
Nagele, MD, (BS Biology ’78) was recognized during homecoming
festivities (Oct. 14) by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences with
their 2000 Humanitarian Award.
Nagele, an Urbana (IL) native, received her
medical training at Southern Illinois University. But, instead of pursuing
a career in the US, she immediately looked for a way to work as a doctor
in the developing world. She joined the Maryknoll Mission Association of
the Faithful in 1984 and has never looked back.
Since 1991, Nagele has been working in
rebel-controlled southern Sudan, where a bloody civil war has been raging
for decades. The fundamentalist government in Khartoum has been trying to
impose strict Islamic law on the Christian ethnic tribes of the South,
resulting in a struggle that has displaced 4 million people and left 2
million dead. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army controls most of the
South, and Nagele works under their auspices.
Disease, malnutrition, and an expanding
population dis-placed by war gives Nagele and her assistants a heavy
caseload. She may see a 100 patients a day. She is often the first doctor
the native Toposa and Dinka people have seen.
The clinic at Narus, as well as one in
Lotimor, are modestly staffed and supplied com-pared to American
hospitals. "Here all the patients are bare-foot. The examining room
is a concrete floor, and the lavatory is an outhouse out back," says
Nagele. "Compared to a US hospital, this is a shock. Com-pared to
what was here before, this is a miracle."
Enduring heat, language barriers, and bouts
of malaria and dysentery, Nagele integrates her faith into practice daily
through compassion. "There is no training in kind-ness in medicine,
but it’s the most important thing."
As friend and former junior high school
teacher Carol Dapogny said, "Susan walks not in the shadow but in the
footsteps of other great humanitarians—the women and men who have
literally given themselves for the good of others."
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