Julian Atim 1980(?)–

Physician, humanitarian-aid worker

Like millions of young Ugandans Julian Atim lost her parents to HIV/AIDS. Unlike many educated Ugandans who left their war-ravaged and disease-plagued country, Atim chose to stay. While still a medical student she volunteered at a clinic in the war-torn northern province of Gulu and organized her fellow students around issues of health care and the economic empowerment of women. She lobbied the Indian government to provide low-cost generic drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, and she campaigned in the United States for help ending the decades-long Ugandan civil war.

Orphaned by AIDS

Born in Palabek, Kitgum, in northern Uganda, Julian Jane Atim was the fifth of nine children of John and Rose Oryang. Her father was an accountant in the finance office of the Ugandan military. They lived a comfortable life in the capital of Kampala with two maids to assist in managing the household. The family belonged to the northern Acoli tribe, and in 1986, when Julian was six, tensions broke out between northern and southern Ugandans. The family moved to Gulu in their native region, where Atim's parents thought they would be safer. Within a few months, however, the anti-government Lord's Resistance Army attacked their village. Julian and her cousin hid in a swamp as rebels marched over the bridge above them. One morning Julian awoke to find dead bodies around her. The family fled back to Kampala.

Although she was a timid child Julian excelled at school and dreamed of becoming a pilot. When she was thirteen years old her father began complaining of headaches. He went to the hospital and never returned. It was not until she entered medical school that Julian realized that her father had died of AIDS. The family of ten fell into poverty and moved into a one-bedroom apartment. Julian's mother sold cooking oil, milk, and sugar to pay the rent, but there was no money for food, much less clothing or Julian's $450 school fees. She was quoted in the Boston Globe as telling her teacher at the Uganda Martyrs Secondary School: “Look here. You send me home, that will be the end of me.” Her teachers helped her to stay in school.

After waiting at a hospital all day to see a doctor, Atim recognized the severe lack of access to health care experienced by most poor Ugandans, and she decided to become a doctor. She earned a scholarship to Makerere University Medical School, Mulago, in Kampala. By then her mother had developed AIDS, and Atim had to choose between paying her siblings' school fees and buying her mother antiviral drugs. She chose to pay the fees. Rose Oryang died in January of 2003. Atim told the Boston Globe: “One of her final messages for me was, ‘Be strong.’ She told me, ‘Julian, I want you to climb the ladders, using what God has blessed you with, and share it with the vulnerable.’” Atim told Mariane Pearl of Glamour in 2007: “My siblings kept me strong by encouraging me to eat, sleep and prepare for my exams.”

As of 2007 AIDS had killed an estimated one million Ugandans and orphaned more than one million chil- dren. For Atim HIV/AIDS was a violation of human rights. She told Pearl: “I want to treat the patient as a whole. My mother died not because she had the disease but because of poverty.” On the Web site of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Atim commented: “If all pregnant women had access to prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission programs, then their unborn children would be protected from getting the infection. If all health workers were aware of the rights of their patients, then they would get the treatment including non-medical ones like confidentiality, privacy and counseling.”

Organized Medical Students

Atim volunteered in hospitals in northern Uganda and organized her fellow medical students to help in the refugee camps where nearly two million Ugandans suffered from HIV/AIDS and other diseases. She planned a student conference on HIV/AIDS as a human-rights issue and the need for public health programs and access to medical care.

In 2005 Atim cofounded Students for Equity in Health Care (SECH), under the auspices of the Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS, to encourage Ugandan doctors to remain in the country. In its first year the group grew to include 25 percent of all Ugandan medical students with chapters at each of the country's three medical schools. SECH organized an annual AIDS Action Week at Makerere University, lobbied for hepatitis B vaccines for all medical students, and worked with the Faculty of Medicine to fund its new Problem-Based Learning curriculum. Atim convinced Mulago Hospital officials to provide treatment options to staff exposed to HIV. She believed that such precautions might encourage health care professionals to remain in Uganda.

After graduation Atim took a $250-per-month job at a small hospital in Gulu that had electricity for only about three hours per day. Its two physicians served a population of some 300,000, and patients sometimes walked for twelve hours to reach the hospital. Atim saw as many as 150 patients per day. She was one of the few Ugandan physicians willing to work in Gulu, which had suffered from three decades of war. Atim treated many women and children who had been beaten, raped, and infected with HIV. About 70 percent of northern Ugandan women had gynecological problems including sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, and cervical cancer. She told Pearl: “If you save a woman, you know you are saving her children as well. I understand now that happiness doesn't come from success or money or a man. Happiness means fulfilling my role in this life.” Atim pinned her hopes on the economic empowerment of women. She told the Voice of America: “We've been trying to empower them through health education … to know their rights to treatment and to say no…. [When] they are given economic independence, they will access health care like any other human being, take care of the family, which includes their children, live better lives.”

Atim also worked at the Naguru Health Center, a clinic on the outskirts of Kampala where AIDS patients sometimes waited all day to be seen. Uganda was known for its anti-HIV/AIDS campaign based on sexual abstinence. Despite some successes, Atim believed that the emphasis on abstinence and marital fidelity over the use of condoms was misguided since many women were infected by their unfaithful husbands, as she believed had happened to her mother. Atim told Pearl: “I see so many mothers like my own who would have never dreamed of looking at a man she wasn't married to.” To protect such women, Atim promoted condom use among all her female patients.

At a Glance …

Born Julian Jane Atim in 1980(?), in Palabek, Kitgum, Uganda; daughter of John and Rose Oryang. Education: Makerere University Faculty of Medicine, Mulago, Kampala, Uganda, MBChB (bachelor's of medicine and surgery), 2005; Harvard University School of Public Health, 2007—.

Career: Gulu Hospital, Uganda, medical officer, 2005-07; Naguru Health Center, Kampala, Uganda, physician, 2005-07; St. Joseph's Hospital, Kitgum, Uganda, staff physician in pediatrics, 2007.

Memberships: Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS; Students for Equity in Health Care, cofounder; Uganda AIDS Advocacy Network; Uganda North American Medical Society.

Awards: Physicians for Human Rights, Health and Human Rights Award, 2006; Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship, 2007; Reno Foundation Scholarship, 2007.

Addresses: Office—Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115.

Honored by Physicians for Human Rights

In the fall of 2006 Atim traveled to the United States to accept an award at the from PHR. Sarah Kalloch, senior coordinator of PHR's Health Action AIDS Africa, told the Boston Globe: “Julian represents the next generation, the young voice, in health and human rights. She's overcome odds that often seemed insurmountable. I think there's a lot of hope in her story.” Atim was quoted on the PHR Web site: “I use human rights to tell policymakers what has been promised to my people and what little has been delivered, and that we will not stand for this. That is how I pay tribute to my mother.”

At Harvard University, Brown University Medical School, and other venues, Atim lectured on health and human rights and on the problem of healthcare workers fleeing Uganda. She lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill to provide more U.S. funding for peace talks in northern Uganda. She told the Washington Post: “The peace process is held by a very thin thread. The United States is a house of power. The warring sides keep threatening to quit the talks and keep holding up conditions. The rebels have caused suffering. We are sick of them.”

In 2007 Atim was a staff physician in pediatrics at St. Joseph's Hospital in Kitgum in northern Uganda. This 350-bed hospital served tens of thousands of internally displaced people. Atim traveled to the United States to raise money for medical supplies, and in the fall of 2007 she entered the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Pursuing a master's degree in international health on a Reno Foundation scholarship, Atim was also supported by a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship to promote the economic empowerment of Ugandan women. She told Pearl: “I want to ensure no life is lost to preventable diseases.”

Sources

Books

Pearl, Mariane, In Search of Hope: The Global Diaries of Mariane Pearl, Throckmorton, 2007.

Periodicals

Boston Globe, October 21, 2006.

Glamour, April 2007.

Online

“Get Involved with PHR: Julian Atim, MD, Human Rights Advocate in Uganda,” Physicians for Human Rights,http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/get-involved/profiles/julian-atim.html (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Global Health: Fighting AIDS in Uganda,” NPR News & Notes,http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6565130 (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Julian Atim,” Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellowships in Social Entrepreneurship,http://www.reynolds.harvard.edu/user/30 (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Julian Atim Drew Courage from Tragedy,” My Uganda,http://www.myuganda.co.ug/news/?more=158 (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Uganda” (radio interview), The Diane Rehm Show,http://wamu.org/programs/dr/06/10/23.php (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Uganda Doctor,” CNN,http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2006/12/02/pkg.uganda.doctor.cnn (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Ugandan Physician Recognized by U.S. Organization,” Voice of America,http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-12/2006-12-01-voa56.cfm (accessed October 23, 2007).

“Uganda's Plight Pressed on Capitol Hill,” Washington Post,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001428.html (accessed October 23, 2007).

—Margaret Alic