Working on a project in Hyderabad, India
Hassan Awan writes on a summer working with the NGO Bhumi in India.
Outside the healthcare centre
I am a third year Manchester medical student who, like so many others, entered the profession to make a difference. So I decided to spend my summer of 3rd year trying to give something back to the global community.
I was given the opportunity to work in India for the NGO Bhumi. They have a simple vision; a sustainable transformation of India through creating changes at a grass-roots level and empowering the people. The project I joined primarily aimed to perform developmental tests on babies, using an adapted Bayley’s scale of Motor and Mental development, and referring on those with developmental delays primarily to the National Institute of Mentally Handicapped (NIMH).
The opportunity to explore India as a worker and not a tourist? A pilot project planning on being rolled out across India if it went well? No way was I turning this down!
We worked in the slum of Rasoolpura. This is the biggest slum in Asia, containing an estimated 100,000 people. The sanitation and healthcare there was terrible; children played in rubbish heaps, open sewers, drinking water found by testing to be dirtier than some sewage water… These are just some of the health issues.
Inside the centre
The project encountered many hurdles. There was no real framework in place for encouraging mothers and babies to attend clinics or how to go about increasing the numbers. Another issue was overcoming cultural barriers to work productively with the Indian volunteers. Age is extremely important in terms of respect and “no” seemed not to be in the vocabulary, which made it difficult to guess when a “yes” meant yes and when it meant no! We wondered whether we would spend our time simply waiting for the clinic to operate productively and frustratingly, how we could entice women to bring their children to the clinic. Prophylaxis was an alien concept to the people, and the first question asked was usually “Do we offer free medication?” Why should they take their seemingly normal children to a health clinic which does not give out free medicine? Especially when it requires taking time off from their hectic lives of working and also looking after their families?
We attempted to jump the hurdles as a team. Small touches like offering snacks at the centre worked marvels. Extensive conversation with the Bhumi head cleared up many issues, especially cultural ones. To collect the mothers and babies, several members of the team would travel with the Indian volunteers into the community. Being able to speak some of the language was a real bonus for me when working with the volunteers trying to convince the women. Nothing felt better than the euphoria of walking into a full clinic bursting with people after having spent the previous four odd hours in the morning going door to door attempting to persuade people to come.
The state of the health of the people in the slum was abysmal, but the people themselves were amazing. Hyderabad is built upon a fairytale of intertwining cultures and my experience there was beyond all my expectations. From the first day, in which I spent some time preoccupied by the smell, to the last day, when I thought I was leaving behind my family in the slum, I was ecstatic with how quickly the people accepted us into their society and how we were able to adjust to the working conditions. I saw first-hand human resilience in the face of extreme difficulty. The touches of kindness I felt then are still with me today, like that of a slum resident I met who fed four hundred people when the monsoon wiped away all the other chances of food. Looking at the bigger picture, I appreciate that healthcare work for short periods abroad can only have lasting benefits if done in conjunction with residents of the area who know what is needed. Thinking of a productive summer mission abroad? Stop thinking and start planning!
Hassan Awan, 3rd year medical student at Manchester University, UK.
hassan.Awan@student.manchester.ac.uk