Thursday and Friday we spent our time learning more about the outreach that the Center for Social Medicine at Pravara does. We spent Thursday at the mobile clinic. We rode in the clinic bus to one of the villages and parked there for the morning. Patients would come on the bus and talk to the doctor and then be given medicines at a low cost to treat whatever they had. There weren't a ton of patients since it was raining and the villages didn't know that we were coming. We took a lunch break and then a nap break while we were parked on the side of the road. The nap break lasted an hour and everyone (2 nurses, driver, doctor, Courtney, and I) all slept for at least a little bit of it. Then we drove to the next village and parked there and saw a few more patients before we called it a day and drove back to Pravara. It was nice to learn a little bit about the mobile clinic and to see how it functions. We found out that most of the month they go to places where there are migrant workers and they do HIV/AIDS screening tests because this population has a high risk of HIV/AIDS and then the other days are when they go to the villages. In the villages the diseases that they mainly see is a common cold and things like that. If the patient needs more investigations done then they are referred to the hospital in Loni for those tests to be done. We also learned a little more about the doctor and her family and she shared pictures of her son with us so that was fun.
Friday we rode the shuttle bus with some interns and residents to one of the rural health centers. It was also a rainy day so there wasn't a lot of patients to be seen, but we did talk quite a bit with the doctor and the intern. We learned how the rural health center works and that there is one for every 50,000 people in the area that Pravara is located. The patients then are able to go to the center and have all of their primary health care needs and some basic lab tests done here and if they need more specialized care then they are referred to the hospital in Loni. They do a lot of prenatal care visits and prescribe all the prenatal medications for the mothers in the area. They don't deliver babies at the rural health centers though, so moms are to go to the hospital around their due date to give birth. In the afternoon the lab technician showed us how to perform the HIV screening test and we were each able to do one of those tests with the blood samples of patients. He then also showed us how to do the hemoglobin test by hand and so we each tested each others hemoglobin. The highlight of the day for me though was when one small child actually looked at us and made faces back at us. I can't remember if I've posted this before but most of the kids here are scared of us. When we smile at them they look away or run to their parents pretty much as fast as they can. This adorable little boy though came right up to us and played with my watch, copied my facial expressions, and hide behind a curtain and then would pop out to look at me.
Friday we rode the shuttle bus with some interns and residents to one of the rural health centers. It was also a rainy day so there wasn't a lot of patients to be seen, but we did talk quite a bit with the doctor and the intern. We learned how the rural health center works and that there is one for every 50,000 people in the area that Pravara is located. The patients then are able to go to the center and have all of their primary health care needs and some basic lab tests done here and if they need more specialized care then they are referred to the hospital in Loni. They do a lot of prenatal care visits and prescribe all the prenatal medications for the mothers in the area. They don't deliver babies at the rural health centers though, so moms are to go to the hospital around their due date to give birth. In the afternoon the lab technician showed us how to perform the HIV screening test and we were each able to do one of those tests with the blood samples of patients. He then also showed us how to do the hemoglobin test by hand and so we each tested each others hemoglobin. The highlight of the day for me though was when one small child actually looked at us and made faces back at us. I can't remember if I've posted this before but most of the kids here are scared of us. When we smile at them they look away or run to their parents pretty much as fast as they can. This adorable little boy though came right up to us and played with my watch, copied my facial expressions, and hide behind a curtain and then would pop out to look at me.
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| Villages covered by the Rural Health Center we were at |
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| Testing Courtney's hemoglobin |
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| Getting my finger pricked |
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| Courtney testing my hemoglobin |
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