Scenes From the Medical Van (Jessica)

So the last two weeks we spent at Kavailyadhama, the traditional medicine hospital. We had an amazing time and learned a ton about Ayurveda, meditation, and naturopathy. Now we’ve moved on to the rural/public health part of our study abroad. We travel to small rural villages on a medical van with a doctor, Dr. Vijay, and his assistant/driver.
















The van is sponsored by Sadhu Vaswani hospital which provides free health care to the surrounding villages and towns. Dr. Vijay distributes medicine to people in the small villages and to the indigenous people of India, or the Adivasi as they are called here.

This type of work has been so rewarding for us, we’ve really enjoyed every minute of it. We are taking the heights, weight, and ages of mainly children and adolescents and are planning on using the data to compare Indian growth patterns to American and other developed countries’ growth patterns. Our ultimate (looong term) goal is to reduce the rate of malnutrition in developing countries. We hope to find sustainable ways to help these families.

Many of the people that the medical van serves are elderly and we’ve noticed that the majority of the problems are related to calcium deficiencies, iron deficiencies, vitamin A deficiencies, and lack of protein in the diet. We created a rough version of a handout that we plan on distributing in the villages and hanging in schools and hospitals.

We are also working on a prevention handout focusing on the reduction of salt and fat in the diet because so many of the elderly people have high blood pressure. We were talking with Dr. Vijay today and he was saying that as the India as a country continues to develop, the rates of hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, and heart disease have all increased. Physical activity decreases and overall diet quality decreases (with the introduction of the oh so popular McDonalds and friends) as the country has developed.

The people in the villages have been absolutely amazing. Every day we visit two different villages. The children laugh and play with us and the elders of the villages always go above and beyond to take care of us.

Being of the “red persuasion” myself, I always and I mean always turn bright red when it’s hot outside. I’m not sure if the people of India have seen a human being turn so red, but there’s a first for everything right? The people of the villages always give us water, invite us into their homes, offer us chai, and great food. We have been so lucky to be able to meet and interact with these people on such an intimate level. Experiences like this are few and far between. It has truly been life changing.

We’ve also developed some serious bargaining skillz. Everyone tries to overcharge us, but it ain’t happening. Well, not as badly, haha. They still probably charge us twice as much as they should, but when we first got here they were charging us 3-4 times the original amount. Baby steps ;)