This week we had our first official postings which were at two different rural health clinics. For the first three days Monday-Wednesday we were posted in Rahata and for the second two days Thursday-Friday we were posted in Babhaleshwar.

Rahata Rural Health Clinic

Babhaleshwar Rural Health Clinic

At our first day at the Rahata clinic we were given a tour of the facilities including, a patient check up room, a lactation consultation room, a room for patients who need to use a short term IV and finally a lab. We were briefed on the process used for blood typing and checking hemoglobin and assisted the lab tech in filling out forms when the patient was present as well as putting on the arm cuff before he drew blood for testing. I also was able to help conduct a pregnancy test (similar to the ones in the US). The patient gave a urine sample and with a dropper I placed 5-8 drops of urine in the well of a plastic test, just like in the US if there was one line the patient was not pregnant, if there were two she was. This patient was in fact pregnant and the lab tech ask if I wanted to tell the mother the news. After finding out the mother wanted this pregnancy I excitedly agreed. When I passed the news on to the mother saying “yes you are!” in Hindi I did not get the reaction I was expecting. After words were exchanged with the lab tech and the patient I later found of that the mother actually did not want the pregnancy and was asking what route she could take to abort the baby. This made my heart hurt a little only because I was expecting to tell a mother she had life inside of her only to find out it was unwanted. However that is part of life and part of working in healthcare.

Rahata Lab

Blood typing

Lab Equipment

A medical student who was interning at the clinic explained most of what we saw in the clinic and as time went on we got to know him and found he was very nice and also helpful in explaining to us local places to eat, what the names of dishes were and local places to visit. The intern explained to us as he was briefing us on what the clinic offers, that there is a campaign in India called “save the girl child” the campaign was set in place because families especially in small villages still have the mindset that a male child is what is desired. This mindset resulted in girls born into families who did not want them being abandoned, even cases of female babies left in garbage cans or on the roadside. Often times these families would also continue to have children until the had a male, increasing the family size and creating a situation where the families could not afford to care for all of the children. When I asked about adoption agencies the intern explained that although there are many of them, the people in the rural villages often times would not go and seek them out. This raised another question, about the abortion rate. We then found out that in India it is a law that you are not allowed to find out the sex of the baby until birth because so many woman would abort the baby if it were female. We were told that there were certain cases of Dr.’s who would tell the patients if they were having a girl and perform the abortion. These Dr.’s that were caught obviously would loose their medical license. I was surprised to hear of these stories but could understand that in a lot of rural areas there are un-educated people, and backwards ideas such as this still exist. It is very encouraging however to hear about initiatives such as the “save the girl child” campaign as well as efforts made by other institutes such as PMT to fund programs that go out into the communities and offer scholarships to specifically girls who want to further their education giving them the same opportunities as males.

Save The Girl Child

Medical intern starting an IV

On the second day and third day of our posting at the Rahata clinic we were able to not only observe patient care in the clinic but also visit schools in the surrounding area. Again we were warmly welcomed especially by the children who were both curious and excited for us to be there. During a school visit while sitting in the teachers office a family from a local villages behind the schoolyard had seen us through the window. When we stepped out side we were asked to come over to their village and have chai. After the approval of the lab tech who was with us we ventured into a small village with him. The people were so incredibly kind and gracious asking us questions which had to be translated and offering us chai which was delicious.
It is overwhelming how well we are treated when visiting the homes of strangers and how kind they all were. It was an amazing experience and the highlight of my day.

The family the invited us into their village

Thursday and Friday we were posted at Babhaleshwar which was a much slower clinic. However we were still able to observe patient care and met a new medical officer and two more medical interns. We were able to tour the village that the rural clinic serves, we stopped at a specific location that acts as a government funded daycare which offers educational classes on health to the mothers and children and well as providing nutritional supplements if a child is undernourished. We learned that there are 8 similar locations throughout the village itself which has a population of around 8,000 people. It was exciting to hear that these government funded facilities are in every village in India. I am blow away by how much government funding goes toward healthcare in this country. All of the clinics we have been to or have herd about have been completely free other then the medication, which is very cheep if you are to get it from one of the clinics. At some locations even the medication prescribed is completely free.