Returning to Duino for the first time in 17 years, Emmanuel is an epidemiologist and a biostatistician and works in the Lacor Hospital in his native Uganda. He grew up wanting to become a doctor to help his people and even insisted on studying medicine in Uganda because he firmly believes that studying in the same environment in which you intend to practice your profession is the best option. Not many of us may understand at the age of 10 – like he did – what they want their live’s mission to be. However, he warned, “one day the call will come” – the call to serve others, to bring about change and “to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem – because you can only ever be one or the other. And when you hear that call you can either chicken out or rise to the challenge. This may be difficult, even dangerous. The price may be high – think of the fate of Giulio Regeni. But when confronted with a crisis, a problem or a need, one must face it and choose to go about ‘business unusual’ rather than not.”
Emmanuel shared his own story, going back to the intense 2 years in Duino and making students laugh heartily with memories of his extended essay, but also recalling how his religious faith made his UWC experience all the more meaningful. He returned to Uganda after graduation to study medicine thanks to a fundraising initiative supported by UWC Adriatic. He had been inspired as a young boy by the example of Lucille Teasdale and her husband Piero Corti who had founded the Lacor Hospital with the aim of training locals so that the facility could eventually be run entirely by Ugandan staff, as is now the case. In Lacor he faced an ebola epidemic and the devastating impact of conflicts on the local population. He became an epidemiologist and a biostatistician at the Lacor Hospital: the second largest and the cheapest in Uganda, as patients are charged no more that 25% of healthcare costs. Emmanuel is therefore a clinician, he teaches public health at university and does research work on HIV and infection prevention. He also has managerial responsibilities with respect to quality control and improvement as he feels strongly about the need to always strive to do better. Yet, he encouraged students to disregard titles and concentrate on the unique satisfaction of having improved a patient’s life, or brought a smile to the face of someone who had been in pain or of simply having served a good cause. He warned students that they must be ready in their professional lives to “challenge the status quo, to innovate and find creative solutions to pressing problems” and he urged them to cultivate their creativity as much as possible in their time at the College. “Be focussed, maximise your experience at UWC, but also remain open to new possibilities.”
As he drew to then of his talk, Emmanuel said he had come back to honour his teachers and thank them and the College for their support and the unique opportunities he enjoyed. His final words were spoken to celebrate the importance of friendship and connectedness, which are key in moving things and “getting things done”. He concluded that UWCers are a “special stock. We are not so normal and my advice to you is to live the metaphor of the pencil: “be sharp, correct your mistakes and then move on and leave a trace”.
National TV network Rai2 has recently broadcast a news report about Emmanuel and the College (in Italian).
