Please read Rebecca’s story. The Cobra Foundation Grants Committee was delighted to support her work by providing a donation to a local charity of her choice during her seven-week placement in the outskirts of New Dehli, India, in June/July this year.
I am a final year medical student studying at the University of Sheffield and I have just returned from a 7 week placement in India. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a doctor and a large part of this is the desire to be able to make a difference to people’s lives.
I grew up in a multicultural area of Derby and always knew I wanted to travel to India at some point. As part of my medical degree we were given the opportunity to do a placement anywhere in the world but I knew I wanted to go to a developing country. This gave me the opportunity to see many different conditions to those seen in the UK, I also hoped that going to a country such as India that maybe I could help to provide healthcare to the people who need it most.
During my seven weeks on placement in India I was based in an area called Faridabad which is on the outskirts of New Delhi. I lived with a local family, being fully immersed in the Indian way of life. I worked in local hospitals both charitable and the government hospital; when not based in hospitals myself and other medical students worked in the slum camps providing basic free healthcare. I worked with a charity set up in 2008 called the Global Orphanage Trust that works to improve lives of people in the local community of Faridabad.
Conditions in one of the slum areas of Faridabad.
The healthcare system in India includes public and private hospitals. The government run hospitals often only provide basic care and lack infrastructure. The private healthcare system is favoured by most people in India despite it being expensive to attend, in some basic small hospitals the price of a stay per day is 2000 rupees (~£20) not including food and medications, to put this into context a meal with a drink in India often only costs the equivalent of 80 pence! The wait in the government hospitals is often long and the hospitals are overcrowded.
The medical slum camps were set up in various slums across Faridabad; the slum populations were too poor to pay for healthcare and therefore often left problems untreated for a long time. The clinics were extremely busy and seeing the conditions in which people live was an eye opener. In the slums infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis or Typhoid were the main problem.
Rebecca and another medical volunteer at the slum camp.
Examining patients in the slum clinics.
The thing I found hardest about working in India was seeing patients having to make decisions about their own health or their children’s care based upon money and the quality of care that they could afford. The government hospitals are basic and due to a lack of funding along with a high demand often have less equipment than private hospitals. Unfortunately during my time there I saw a caesarean section birth of a still born baby as the mother had put off going to hospital as she couldn’t afford private healthcare and struggled to afford transport to the government hospital that was further away. It was hard to watch knowing that if that baby had been born in the UK it would have always stood a better chance at surviving both due to the access of free healthcare in the UK and the better facilities available to monitor the baby’s health.
2 other volunteers and I spent a week running a Health Education Course for women at a local college. The course was very popular and after the first day we had so much interest that we had to split the women into 2 groups! We spent the first 2 days teaching them about blood pressure and blood sugar. Then on the 3rd day we taught them about first aid, we looked at management of burns as they are a common problem in India due to many people cooking on open fires in small houses. On Thursday we discussed women’s health problems including breast cancer self-checking and pregnancy related problems. We ended the week with a quiz and certificate presentation. We were very impressed, and proud, to see just how much the women had remembered. The women were our friends by the end of the course and the Principal at the college was thankful for us teaching them. Throughout we emphasised that we wanted the women to share what they had learnt with their family and friends; hopefully enabling the course to have wider impact in the local community.
Certificate presentation at the college. 23 women completed the course.
I really enjoyed my time in India and feel extremely privileged that I got the opportunity to work in such an interesting place with such hospitable people. Working in the slum camps and doing the Health Education Programme for women were the most valuable things that I did in India.
I also learnt a lot about the culture and customs of India by getting to do a little travelling whilst out there. Experiencing the poverty, religion and even just travelling on a train has been truly eye opening for me!
My time in India has been an unforgettable experience that I’d recommend to anyone; meeting some of the most welcoming people, seeing a wide range of conditions not seen in the UK alongside living in a very different culture. I have no doubt that the medical experiences and the people I met along the way will help me to be a better doctor in the future.
Rebecca’s chosen charity: The Global Orphanage Trust
www.aimabroad.org/global_orphanage_trust.html
Whilst out in India Rebecca had a lot of contact with the Global Orphanage Trust Charity. She lived with Dr Bandhu and his family that set up the charity in 2008. The charity was set up with a vision to create opportunities and improve people’s lives in the local community of Faridabad (On the outskirts of Delhi).
Projects set up by the charity include three slum schools, an orphanage, women empowerment projects, medical camps and most recently a school for disabled children.
The children in the orphanage receive education and tutoring. The slum schools employ local women as teachers. The trust also helps to provide children attending the slum schools with clothes, educational supplies and an education both in Hindi and some English.
The medical camps run by the trust supply medication to those who cannot afford it. The camps also use equipment such as blood pressure monitors to enable the doctor, alongside medical volunteers to provide healthcare.
Rebecca said, “I was impressed by the number of people helped by this trust which is no small feat. I saw children incredibly happy and eager to learn and real differences to people’s health in the slums.”
The trust relies upon volunteers working at the projects and donations in order to continue its work out in Faridabad, India.
In the future the trust aims to:
- Open more slum children’s schools to offer free high-quality education.
- Open several medical dispensaries to offer free medical care to those who need it most.
- Install several bathrooms in rural India to maintain the public’s hygiene and offer a comfortable and necessary bathroom to people who live in villages.
