The past two weeks I have been travelling to various parts of the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand Province as part of the rural experience of the Urban-Rural Comparative program I am a part of. The mountains were amazing. Such a difference from the valley of Dehradun.
Our first stop was the village of Patti, which I have a hard time finding on any map. A couple hundred people live in the village. I was there to shadow a rural doctor, who runs a small clinic. The patient population was much different from the population of the private clinics in the valley. Here many more people came in for injuries (most are laborers) and diarrhea. The doctor practices integrative medicine and uses Ayurvedic medicine liberally alongside typical allopathic treatments. The doctor also visits neighboring villages twice a week to treat patients that can not come to see him. We had a lovely 1 hour hike to one village on Tues and stayed in Patti to perform a health camp at the middle school. There I got to look in the ears and mouths and listen to the lungs of about 25 students as I checked them for cavities and infections while the doctor advised them on brushing their teeth and sent them to the clinic to have their ears cleaned.
Our first stop was the village of Patti, which I have a hard time finding on any map. A couple hundred people live in the village. I was there to shadow a rural doctor, who runs a small clinic. The patient population was much different from the population of the private clinics in the valley. Here many more people came in for injuries (most are laborers) and diarrhea. The doctor practices integrative medicine and uses Ayurvedic medicine liberally alongside typical allopathic treatments. The doctor also visits neighboring villages twice a week to treat patients that can not come to see him. We had a lovely 1 hour hike to one village on Tues and stayed in Patti to perform a health camp at the middle school. There I got to look in the ears and mouths and listen to the lungs of about 25 students as I checked them for cavities and infections while the doctor advised them on brushing their teeth and sent them to the clinic to have their ears cleaned.
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| Room in Patti |
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| Patti Pharmacy or "Chemist" |
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| Patti locals on the main road. |
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| Village about an hour away from Patti |
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| Me getting ready to go to clinic. |
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| Kids lining up waiting for their check ups |
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| Me checking up a patients ears |
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| Dr. Paul keeping everything organized. |
Nice form with the otoscope Laura!
ReplyDeleteOh and I love the open-toed shoes that you're wearing. Must be a breath of fresh air to not wear socks or shoes to clinic. :)
ReplyDeleteOpen toed shoes are the norm. In the hospital it's a little sketchy when they pull out the scalpels!
ReplyDelete