Remaining of Kolkata

This is Anmol reporting the arrival of CBID India has reached Norway and started to explore Stavanger. But , right now I am sharing the experience of our remaining of Kolkata trip other than what Hector talked in previous post.

12 August:

It was Sunday but we went back to SSKM hospital to NICU and L&D for further observations of the same stuff. We still found time for sightseeing and we visited the Victorial Memorial that was built by Britishers when Kolkata was the Capitla of the country and next we visited the Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

 Hector and Stephen in a good walking pose

 Outside The Victoria Memorial 

 The Saint Paul’s Cathedral

13 August:

Monday started with an experience to the School of tropical medicine where we accompanied Dr. Tripathi’s students to get an insight into the disease of TB and HIV. The discussion and observation was really helpful to get an overview of how TB is dealt at all the levels. Along with that we also visited the ART clinic where we met Dr. Chaudhuri who explained us the flow of patients with HIV and how is it diagnosed, counseled and treated at all the levels of healthcare.

Then we had our lunch with Dr. Tripathi’s group where we had 3 kinds of meat curries of chicken, mutton and fish.

Lunch with Dr. Tripathi’s group

The later part of day was spent at the L&D of Kolkata Medical College which has very high frequencies of delivery. The residents were really cool and a lot of challenges at the tertiary level were discussed with them. Also, since actual L&D of the hospital was under construction, so everything was not perfect in the make-shift room. Stephen will follow up with the details of Kolkata Medical College in another post.

 14 August

                               

This day was a very different experience for us as we visited a private health care provider set up of JSV innovations. We went to Salboni block of Midnapore district in West Bengal along with Dr. Saha (one of the founder of JSV), Dr. Acharya and Dr. Tripathi. On the way we stopped for breakfast where we had tandoori stuffed parantha with lots of butter (only for me) and chai.

Breakfast at the “Dhabha” with Dr. Saha

JSV innovations is working as a CSR partner with Jindal Steel Works to provide health services to the community of Salboni, where JSW is setting up a steel plant.

The business model of such kind of private health care set up seemed to be very interesting as Dr. Saha showed us some reports which mentions that every year ~ $6 billion is donated as CSR by companies in India, out of which nearly half goes into health care. The corporate, being non expert in utilization of these amounts for an impact to society, are always looking for organizations for using these amounts for betterment of society.

Road to Salboni

Resting under the tree

Salboni is kind of pilot project for JSV innovations where they have started forming database for family information and children immunization. Also, they have started distributing deworming medicines to the villagers as most of them have been exposed to hook worms because of not using sleepers/shoes for walking. All these services are being done by health assistants who are being trained as health workers in a one year program, after which they would be deployed as nurses in JSW’s hospital in the plant. Interestingly, these health assistants used galaxy tablet for storing their records.

 Health Assistant feeding the data in the tablet during the field visit

Health Assistant with a villager providing de-worming medicine

JSV innovations also run a mobile clinic and a fixed clinic everyday which is run by a team comprising of a doctor, ANM, pharmacologist and health assistants. The mobile clinic is set up in mornings once a week for a group of 5 villages together at an accessible location and in a week covers entire 25 target villages for the project.  The fixed clinic works everyday in afternoons at the JSW site. Both of these clinics acted as OPD and pharmacy and the care was provided free of cost.

Fixed clinic at the JSW site made out of goods train cart

Mobile clinic at one of the villages being run at primary school

15 August

It was the Independence Day of India, but we guys had plans for work for this day too. Hector, Michelle and I along with Dr. Tripathi visited the SHIS clinic close to the Bangladesh border while Stephen and NID team spent the day at the L&D of Kolkata medical college. We also celebrated Independence Day outside Dr. Tripathi’s residence where we had sweets and samosas.

Michelle and Hector celebrating Independence Day at Kolkata

The SHIS clinic was started back in 80s as a private setup for treating TB. The major funds for running this clinic comes from royalty earned by Dominique Lapierre’s book based on Kolkata “The city of joys”. SHIS was the pioneer of starting the DOTS strategy for TB treatment where the patients have to take their medications infront of the DOTS provider so as to prevent poor compliance due to default. The Govt. of India has now nationalized the DOTS program as protocol for TB treatment.

Thanksgivings to Dominique Lapierre written on the boundary walls of SHIS clinic 

After few years of setting up, SHIS expanded itself to general OPDs and opened primary and secondary schools for education. Also SHIS has special boat clinics in the island of Sunderbans where the boat is completely equipped with diagnostics tool and acts as a mobile clinic to reach out to the 52 islands of Sunderbans.

CBID team with SHIS team

We returned back to Kolkata in the evening to take our overnight 8 hour train to Patna. It was voluntary move to travel by trains whose result was probably a bad night sleep. This was first time that Hector, Michelle and Stephen were using the rail network of the country.

 Stephen, Hector and Michelle on their first train journey in India

16 August

We reached Patna early morning and were taken to the “Happy Home” guest house by our drivers who would accompany us for rest of Bihar trip. We met JHPIEGO Patna staff in the first half of the day to discuss on Bihar specific issues and JHPIEGO’s program in the state. Then we left for Darbhanga district which was around 4 hours drive from Patna.

Soon a lot of stuff to come from Darbhanga from the Team!! 

-Anmol