University of Washington students evacuated from Ghana after becoming sick during a study-abroad program are seeking thousands of dollars in refunds for their aborted trip.
The eight students were evacuated from rural Ghana by ambulances and chartered planes after their illnesses cut short by a week the planned five-week program.
After returning to Seattle, several students met with Anand Yang, director of UW's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, to voice concerns about the conduct of the trip's two leaders, Linda Iltis, UW's Ghana program director, and her husband, Ter Ellingson, a UW professor of ethnomusicology.
The school would not discuss details of the complaints, which are still being reviewed.
The UW "is aware that behavioral issues of the faculty and management issues have been raised," said Norman Arkans, UW's executive director of media relations. "We need to figure out exactly what happened."
Iltis acknowledged Thursday that "there were some problems" during the trip but would not say more.
One of the students who fell ill said she and the 16 other students who stayed in Hain, in Ghana's upper-west region, often were not given enough food. The student asked not to be named while UW sorts through her request for more than $4,000 in refunds for program fees and airfare.
The university hasn't decided whether it will repay any money to the eight students, Arkans said; it has decided to give students a chance to earn full credit for the trip.
The student said she didn't realize Iltis and Ellingson would not be lodging with the group but instead in a village about four-and-a-half miles away. The student said she lost 15 pounds in three weeks with what UW doctors later diagnosed as dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, and salmonella. Several other students also became ill, with fevers and vomiting. The exact cause is unknown, though malaria has been ruled out.
Leah Choi, a UW senior art major who also made the August trip, said she believes the illnesses gave UW an excuse to pull the plug on a poorly run program. Choi was chagrined that the medical evacuations may make her group look like travel neophytes.
Staying in a high malaria-risk area with pit toilets and unreliable electricity was challenging, "but they were conditions that we consciously chose so that we could learn about sustainable development in rural Ghana," Choi said.
