By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
Helen Mattsson, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Maine in Orono (UMO), won’t be spending the upcoming spring break on white sand beaches in Daytona or at home with her parents, Christer and Nancy Mattsson, in Scarborough.
Instead, Mattsson is working hard to raise money so she will be able to travel to Ecuador to help set up a temporary clinic and assist in various medical screenings.
Mattsson is a member of the Medicine, Education and Development for Low Income Families Everywhere (MEDLIFE) organization. MEDLIFE started as a student group in 2005 at UMO, and has spread to Dartmouth and the University of Vermont (UVM) campuses as well, Mattsson said.
“The MEDLIFE program provides me a great opportunity for direct patient contact, something that’s pretty rare for undergraduates,” Mattsson said.
As part of the MEDLIFE program, Mattsson and 11 other UMO students will spend their two-week spring break outside Riobamba, Ecuador, one of the larger cities in the country.
“We’re really going to be traveling to the rural communities outside of the city to setup clinics,” she said.
Mattsson said she will assist physicians with patient intake, including checking patients’ vital signs and performing other triage duties. She will also shadow the oral surgeon as he performs dental screenings, extractions, and possible surgery evaluations. Mattsson said one of the duties of the oral surgeon is to identify candidates for surgery which cannot be completed in the two weeks, and must be scheduled for a follow-up visit.
“Most of the patients will be women and children without access to any healthcare and no running water or electricity,” Mattsson said.
While Mattsson will not receive any academic credit for the trip, she said that she’s looking forward to seeing healthcare on a global scale, a chance few practicing physicians are able to experience.
“It’s rare that you get to see issues from a broader perspective,” she said.
Mattsson said the group will meet up with MEDLIFE UVM students while on their trip.
“I think they’re pretty excited,” she said. “We’re all pretty excited and a little anxious about what we might encounter.”
Her trip to Ecuador will be the first time Mattsson has been to a less developed country and she said she believes one of the largest barriers the group will face on their trip is communication, as many Ecuadorians do not speak English, and overcoming cultural boundaries.
“We have a few students who are fluent in Spanish,” she said. “But we don’t know what [the Ecuadorians] cultural beliefs are on healing. This may be the first time they’ve seen modern medicine, and we’re only going to be there for two weeks.”
Each student is responsible for raising their own funds for transportation not only for themselves, but medical equipment as well.
The estimated cost for each student is $2,000, although fundraising efforts do not stop at a specific dollar amount.
 “Transporting all of the equipment that we have to bring down there is very expensive,” Mattsson said.
 “Any extra money would be used for later MEDLIFE trips,” Mattsson said. “About half of the students going have already done this before. Some are going back for their third or fourth time.”
So far the group has raised about $9,000 through various fundraisers.
“We have auctions of things students have brought back from past trips, bottle drives, I even entered a few writing contests,” Mattsson said.
When Mattsson was a sophomore at Scarborough High School she became involved with the local Rotary Club, largely to attend the Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) conference, she said. Mattsson said she attended as a camper for a year, learning about leadership and the many goals of the Rotary organization, and returned for the next four years as a camp councilor. After graduating as salutatorian of her high school class in 2005, Mattsson founded the Rotaract Club as a freshman at UMO, a subsidiary organization of the Rotary Club.
“Rotaract has pretty much the same principles as the Rotary Club,” she said. “They’re involved with international services, volunteering at soup kitchens and fundraising for groups like Heifer International or setting up shelter boxes.”
Mattsson is no longer involved with the Rotaract, as most of her time is now spent on class work for her molecular and cellular biology major and premed minor courses as well as her involvement with UMO’s honor college.
“It’s a challenge to keep your experiences varied; it’s easy to get stuck in the library,” she said.
When not in class, Mattsson works as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for the campus ambulance service.
“I work nights sometimes, it’s a 24 hour service. Sometimes it means you might be on call all day,” she said.
Mattsson said her time as an EMT has taught her how important communication with patients can be.
“You have to know how to read people and how to get the information you need to treat them. It’s the biggest challenge,” she said.
Last month, Mattsson spoke to the Scarborough Rotary Club about her upcoming trip, which has inspired the Rotary Club to work with the Portland Sea Dogs baseball team to offer a “First Pitch” raffle, with all of the proceeds benefiting Mattsson’s MEDLIFE trip.
The contest is $5 for one chance to win or $10 for three. The winner of the contest will receive four tickets to a Sea Dogs game of their choice, with the opportunity to throw the first pitch of the game. You can enter the raffle at Tim Byrne Photography, The Real Estate Store, Scarborough Downs, OPTA, Rainy Day Train or by calling Scarborough Rotary President Jim Weaver at 883-5809.