Week 1 Update

Hey all! 

One week into my trip, I have grown incredibly grateful for the amenities that the US has. I am truly amazed that people are capable of living in these conditions. I often wake up in the morning without electricity, without running water and/or bugs crawling over me. There are stray dogs, pigs and countless people sleeping in the streets. Regardless, my host family has been fantastic in helping us adjust to the cultural differences. Yesterday, Dada took me for a ride on their motorcycle. I think I may have to buy one...Fun Fact: Pune has the most two wheelers compared to all of Asia.

Our program leader, Dr. Dabak has also been great to us. He promised that we would at least see one cesarean section, one terminal, one hysterectomy, one tubal ligation and one live birth. I'm sure some of my readers are a tad uncomfortable with the second, but Dr. Dabak explained that it is important that Indian women are empowered with their right to choose when contraception is so hard to come by. India has 2% of the world's wealth and yet has 20% of the world's population. 33% of this massive population lives on an income of no more than $1.25 a day. Women can simply not afford to feed and cloth 10 children and are rightfully given the choice to terminate. This is a true unique quality to the program as this is not a procedure that even most medical students are allowed to witness. I will spare you the details, but I did get to see one yesterday! Yesterday I also witnessed two tubal ligations and a cesarean section. There was a woman induced into labor last night, so hopefully I will be seeing a live birth this morning!

Dr. Dabak also described the difficulty in the work ethic of Indians. India's government provides free healthcare to everyone, but this requires patients to seek care and/or effort by healthcare professionals. Their three-teir system appears excellent on paper, but is not executed well. Many doctors do not work to their full potential, simply because they don't want to and there is no risk to them not doing so. They may we legally forced to open a clinic in rural Marahastra (The 'state' where Pune is located) work their for a few hours a week and choose to illegally open a clinic in Pune to work instead or they may not work at all. An individual nurse is assigned to 5000 people  (about 1000 families) and that nurse is responsible for performing home visits to monitor health of his/her 5000 people. But, whose to say that this nurse does this? This duty is crucial in family planning and welfare.

Inidian physicians are usually seeing far more patients than those in the US to accomodate the large population. A physician will see about 10-12 patients per hour. This requires impeccable efficiency and if a doctor only works a couple hours per day, not everyone is recieving the 'free' health care. Think about that next time you complain that your doctor was rushing you out the door!

What I found most interesting was Dr. Dabak's discussion on vasectomy procedures. He stated that a well trained doctor can perform a vasectomy in 5 minutes without any need of anesthetic. However, US physicians choose to extend this procedure with unnecessary measures, often including anesthetic and hospital stay, which costs the patient money, the doctor time and is a true waste of resources. In India wasting resources is not an option. There are simply not enough to do so; this truth applies in all areas of living.  For instance in Pune, a more developed city than most, the city only provides running water for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night and electricity is also luxury.

I have been trying to share pictures, but it does not seem to be working. I'll try to share then separately.

Stay tuned!