No Tinea solium in here!

It’s been a fun last couple of days! Lots of good learning, and we’ve had a chance to hang out with the other international students, or “elective students” as we’re known as around here. One cool thing to note: People from New Zealand, the UK and Australia are all familiar with Ultimate Frisbee! And, they're all going to teach us Americans how to play Cricket. Hopefully tomorrow we'll all bond over a game of ultimate, made possible with my nice 18 rupee hot pink flying disc. Woohoo!

It’s also been awesome learning about what health care is like in other countries. In Australia for example, they have a lot of outreach clinics there for the Aboriginal population, much like how the CMC goes out to villages here, and how in SA we help underserved areas in south Texas. It’s kind of inspiring, knowing that people all over the world are trying to make it a healthier place.

And speaking of south Texas, some of its areas close to Mexico may actually be in worse shape than the villages we saw here in India. This may be because the CMC has been helping the communities for the past 20 years by funding community health workers and day care teachers for the children. Despite the dust that seems to surround Vellore, its natural beauty is still quite amazing. My dad told me that "Vellore" is a British adaptation of the original name. It roughly translates to “brown sugar town.” So, sugar cane fields are everywhere! Rice fields too!

During nurses’ rounds we traveled to villages around the area and saw how prenatal care was done for expecting mothers. Despite the small size of this hut, inside we found a TV and a large dresser drawer. The temperature was also very cool, the mud must keep out the sun’s warmness. The organization of the program is really impressive—the community health workers keep track of everyone in the village and know who’s sick, who’s pregnant, who’s taking birth control, and who may be suffering from domestic abuse. They then direct these people to get the care they need.

Doctors’ rounds are similar with a giant clinic van traveling to one village, and people coming from all around for medication refills, new complaints, and prenatal care. This was awesome--we learned how to listen to fetal heart tones with our stethoscopes, and how to determine how far along the pregnancy was and where the baby was positioned by using our hands. Ultrasounds are not routine and only reserved for cases with a strong suspicion for a breech pregnancy or other complications.

We also helped the nurses immunize children. For the babies they do two shots at the same time, one in each thigh. I had a fun time watching the little ones have different reactions to the shots. Here they still give the oral polio vaccine and don’t give MMR for children. They don't immunize pregnant women with Rubella either. I was told that MMR and Rubella were being pushed for to be mandatory, but funding seems to be a huge problem here. What really impressed me though was the supply of meds--the clinic was a pharmacy on wheels!

On a side note, earlier this week I attended an awesome lecture on neurocystercercosis (it's huge here!) It surprised me that while most patients contracted the disease from undercooked pork, 30% were vegetarians and became infected by contaminated vegetables or food handlers. This adds another disease to my list of “things I hope I don’t get in India.” :-) All right, time to hit the sack, my CHAD rotation starts tomorrow! YAY!