Skip to main content

DOCTORS REACH OUT

Image
By
Of all India’s paradoxes, the weirdest seems to be the way it provides health care to its people. While it offers high-end care to medical tourists as well as Indians who are able to afford the high costs, millions of Indians continue to have limited or no access to basic healthcare.
Responding to this challenge and listening to the calling of their profession, a band of dedicated young Indian doctors have started providing medical help to those who need it most, at the cost of their studies, careers and comfort.  Called “Doctors For You (DFY)”, this group shot into fame recently when they were awarded the “best medical team in a crisis zone” award by the prestigious British Medical Journal group for helping victims of the 2008 Bihar floods.
When millions were rendered homeless during the Kosi floods in Bihar, DFY deployed 110 of its members to treat villagers for diarrhea, chest infections, snake bites, typhoid and malaria. During the 6 months the group treated around 130,000 patients in villages, relief camps and mobile clinics. One of its young members, Dr Chandrakant Patel, lost his life when struck by lighting while sleeping in the open in a medical camp.
DFY was formed in 2007 in Mumbai by a group of young doctors and medical students from government medical colleges to organize blood donations to tide over dengue and malaria epidemics in Mumbai slums when blood and blood products often fell short. Now DFY has clinics in Mumbai and Saharsa (Bihar) and is gearing up to become one of the rapid-response medical teams during natural calamities.
Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) is another such group reaching out to needy communities. It is an independent international medical aid organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters.
Founded in Paris, in 1971, by a small group of doctors and journalists, it is now an international apolitical movement with branches in 19 countries, conducting 3,800 missions every year with the services of 22,500 volunteers across the globe. 
MSF’s presence in India is substantial. Through small clinics strategically located, it is helping tackle AIDS and tuberculosis in Mumbai and Manipur, Kala azar in Bihar, primary health problems in Naxal-infested Andhra and Chhatisgarh, and mental health issues in strife -torn Kashmir. In addition it responds to medical challenges that natural calamities and conflicts throw up such as the flash floods in Leh and the wreckage of cyclone Aila in Bengal.
Young medicos coming out of medical colleges could benefit immensely by joining these organizations, even for a while, to regain their orientation to medical “service”. Doctors and volunteers who provide these services in remote areas often live the lives of unrecognized heroes and could act as inspiring role models for today’s youth. It is yet another Indian paradox, though, that our media gives them scant attention, and does not bring them adeqautely into the lime light, as they deserve.
As published in HT City( Hindustan Times) dated 19 June, 2011.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

Uberification of Health Care

By
The imaginative concept of matching transportation demands of people with cab facilities using a smartphone platform that Uber is credited to having created is now beginning to be applied to health care as well. At the outset, let me share with you what I understand of Uber. It is an on-line transportation company that develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to connect with Uber drivers through a software platform for taxi service. Uber itself does not own any assets such as cars, or hire the drivers. Uber was founded by Tavis Kalanick and Garrett Camp as recently as 2009 in San Francisco, but the impact and success of this “start up” has reverberated across the world, being now valued at US $ 62.5 billion. Fresh successful ideas in one domain often tickle the minds of entrepreneurs in other fields. Healthcare experts are now trying to explore if they can bring about a revolution in their sector as well. The proposition se...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more