Student shines as 'Point of Light'

Kathleen Mahoney will be honored for her work with Doctors Without Borders. Deep in the Brazilian rainforests just two years ago, Kathleen Mahoney taught the indigenous forest dwellers to diagnose and treat deadly diseases. Today, Mahoney, a Penn graduate student in the Nursing School, will be named a presidential Point of Light for her valiant volunteer efforts. The award, granted by the Points of Light Foundation chaired by former President George Bush, names one individual or organization every day who has "made a commitment to connect Americans through service to help meet critical needs in their communities and in the nation," according to a press release from the foundation. Mahoney, 28, was selected as today's Point of Light for the services she performed abroad with Doctors Without Borders -- the world's largest independent emergency medical relief organization and winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. As a volunteer, Mahoney's assignment was to train local health-care workers of the Amazon rainforest in the diagnosis of malaria and the treatment of other diseases that have recently been introduced in the villages by loggers and drug traffickers invading the area. Since the project began, the number of annual cases of malaria in the area has been reduced by nearly half. Recalling the rustic life she led in the Brazilian rain forest, Mahoney said, "I loved living minimally, with minimal material things." Her days in Brazil began -- to the alarm of village roosters -- as soon as the sun came up outside the school or abandoned home where she had hung her hammock the night before. She bathed in the river with the country's natives and ate their standard diet of rice, beans and local grains. After breakfast she would meet with regional healthcare workers to begin seeing patients, treating their ailments or supervising the treatments. Though each of the villages she visited had a distinct language and culture, Mahoney used her Portuguese to communicate with the workers and patients she assisted. Also, each month Mahoney -- called "Doctora" by the local people -- would teach 10-day courses on disease diagnosis and treatment. When she was not teaching and treating patients in isolated villages -- some of the villages could only be reached in the rainy season when the rivers were high enough to carry boats -- Mahoney was back at her base camp performing political functions. Working closely with the local government, Mahoney and her team set up an infrastructure that would allow healthcare workers to continue teaching medical courses and treating diseases after Doctors Without Borders had left the area. However, the indifference the Brazilian government showed to the indigenous population made the project's political goal its greatest challenge. "We were really fighting against a way of thinking that the indigenous people don't contribute to the gross national product, don't vote? don't really have much value to the government," Mahoney said. Despite the challenges she and her fellow volunteers faced, Mahoney believes her project in the villages was a success. "The fact that they have a microscope in the village and someone trained to use it and they have someone trained on how to give medication," Mahoney said, "that will cut the spread [of diseases]."