First Day at Vivekananda Memorial Hospital

Today was my first working day at Vivekananda Memorial Hospital. Since I'm only here for a week, I only have enough time get a glimpse of what sorts of programs and initiatives they have here and don't have any sort of opportunity to get involved in projects of my own. That, and I'm not a medical student so I wouldn't be able to treat patients. Aside from that, I would say that the first day as a good glimpse into some of the heart of what the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement is all about.

I started off my day going on inpatient rounds with Dr. Seetharam, husband of my contact person here at SVYM. We went through all the wards the hospital has and talked to each patient, going through what they were hospitalized for, and what treatment was being done to get them discharged. It was cool bouncing medical terminology back and forth with Dr. Seetharam - those "Trauma, Life in the ER" episodes I used to watch on TLC were coming to life. Since the organization exists to serve the poor and underprivileged, there were a plethora of services that were being offered for free.

For the next section of the day, I met with a man named Shivappa and the man who works in the Water and Sanitation division of SVYM. They took me on a simple tour of the Sanitation Park behind the hospital, which was essentially a "showroom" of 10 different kinds of toilets with different configurations of building material, type of pit the "matter" empties into, and methods of flushing. We had a good time joking about the toilet that had a roof, but no barrier around the person. Because sanitation promotion and fecal matter are both important issues in rural public health, the Sanitation Park serves as an important pillar by which SVYM can promote awareness about hygiene to people in the surrounding area who might otherwise discount its importance.

Next, I got to visit the Vivekananda School of Excellence. It's a school that was started about eight years ago when the leaders of the organization realized that education was a crucial means by which development needed to be undertaken. With thousands of children in the surrounding rural areas, reaching these kids became a prime objective for long term development of the area. All of the doctors' children attend the school, along with hundreds of other children and kids from the local tribes in the area. From the looks and stares and pointed fingers that I got when I walked into different classrooms, it might have been one of the few times that these kids (especially the ones from local tribes) had seen a Westerner, let alone an Asian westerner.

The last half of the afternoon was occupied by an advocacy clinic that was held for women who had just delivered babies or were somewhere in the child birthing age. Because there are certain stigmas and fears of delivering children in a hospital, especially in the rural areas where myths and rumors abound through word of mouth and not necessarily from any credible source, many women will often times avert going to the hospital to deliver their baby at home, risking a whole bunch of mother and baby problems. This clinic was held to distribute "Baby Packs' filled with blankets, clothes, and other misc. items for new borns while taking the opportunity to educate women about the importance of hospital care for pregnant women. The last part of my day going on another set of outpatient and inpatient rounds with an OBGYN doctor (obstetrics/gynecologist) and learning about many of the issues that women face. It was definitely pretty enlightening and interesting.

I rounded up my day with a game of cricket with some of the doctor's kids and am about to eat dinner (9:16pm). Tomorrow I'm supposed to go on a mobile clinic out into the tribal areas, but if that doesn't work out, I have an open invitation from the OBGYN doctor to come and witness a hysterectomy!