Alaska Sudan Medical Project

"Dr. Jill Seaman has dedicated most of her medical career to providing medical care for people in areas that are remote, and often entirely overlooked by the wider medical community.

Jill has worked with kala azar in South Sudan since 1989. She arrived to find the biggest epidemic in decades unfolding within a war zone. People in rural Sudan had no access to medical care and seemingly no voice in the medical world. Literally half the population was already dead. This tragedy became a turning point in Jill’s life: working in solidarity with the poor of Sudan has remained her primary focus ever since.

Necessity and minimal resources forced Jill to become something of an expert on kala azar. Over the past 16 years, she and her co-workers have treated tens of thousands of kala azar patients, mostly in open-air clinics and mud huts. She collaborates with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) Holland, the World Health Organization, and other NGOs to develop treatment protocols, field-test drugs, write academic articles, and educate Sudanese and Ethiopian staff. The tide of death brought on by kala azar has largely turned.

Jill’s work was recognized by Time Magazine, when it profiled her as one of its 10 “Heroes of Medicine” in 1997. Perhaps the sweetest recognition is her naming by the Nuer. Jill is known throughout Nuerland as Chotnyang, the beautiful multi-toned brown cow without horns. The Nuer revere their cows. There is no reward quite like seeing a patient who was carried in, too weak or crippled to walk, able to run alongside his or her cows again. It is both humbling and rewarding. That keeps Jill going in her voluntary medical missionary efforts."

Jill Seaman from: http://www.boschnet.net/sudan/index.htm

Jill Seaman, MD, and Sjoukje de Wit, RN, have worked with the Nuer since 1989 and 1993 respectively. They helped establish TB treatment in the West Upper Nile region of Sudan under the auspices of the non-government organization (NGO) Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers, or MSF). MSF closed this program when security risks became overwhelming. The Nuer, however, could not escape. TB became one of their most lethal infectious diseases. They begged medical workers to return. Since no NGOs were willing to start treatment in such an unstable war zone, Ms. de Wit and Dr. Seaman with financial and moral support from their friends re-entered the area in July 2000.

Seaman is a graduate of the University of Washington Medical School, is board certified in family practice through the University of California San Fransisco at Salinas and is also a Diplomate in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (London).

Seaman has earned international recognition for her groundbreaking work on kala-azar (visceral lishmaniasis), an epidemic which had killed more than 100,000 people in a remote part of Sudan. She has also earned the Humanitarian Award from the University of Washington as a remarkable alumnus.

In 2001 Seaman earned the Alumni Achievement Award from Middlebury College in Vermont. Seaman has also co-authored and written numerous articles published in various medical journals. Between working in Africa, Seaman provides public-health services to Yup'ik Eskimos in Bethel, Alaska, located about 400 air miles west of Anchorage.