tuesday

tuesday's clinic at bamhni was less busy than usual: patients came in a steady stream and not all at once, which can sometimes be overwhelming. several patients with diarrhoea, two of them dehydrated. one woman very sick with pneumonia. four pregnant women, one child with a large abscess on her neck, another child with malaria, an infant with asthma. two old TB patients and one new one. a woman with rheumatoid arthritis, two patients with psychiatric illness, one with a seizure disorder on medication, four hypertensives. a man with an insect bite that has caused local necrosis, and old man with a malignancy. several with anaemia, two with otitis (a ear infection), a couple of dozen other patients with less serious problems.

and the first patient, a child, brought with abnormal behaviour for a month, when faith healing did not work. i brought him back with me to ganiyari and he is being investigated for the cause, having been started on medication to control the seizures.

patients come to the bamhni clinic from about 50 villages around, many crossing over from neighbouring madhya pradesh, walking a day or more to reach a nearby village where they stay with a relative to attend this clinic which runs on tuesdays. enterprising jeep drivers sometimes run chartered trips from a large village surhi about 10 km away, where patients can reach by bus. most come with serious problems, and the dearth of adequate medical care at an affordable price in this rural area on the border of chhattisgarh and madhya pradesh, is obvious.

this was one tuesday clinic inside a remote forest area, most tuesdays the clinic is busier and sicker than this one.

yet our Government seems to feel that people in rural areas have small problems that can be dealt with by badly trained health workers, or even a village level woman with minimal training, with no supervision or continuing support. access to secondary and tertiary level care - even primary care - is a dream for most of the population that resides outside large towns or cities.

i am glad to report that phulsita's son-in-law ajit is back at work in the glass factory at faridabad. the shard of glass apparently pierced his eyelid, and just missed the eyeball. let us hope that he continues to be safe from injuries.

this is my blogging consultant's blogsite dilip's blog .thanks a ton, dilip. just so i wont forget, trying out another link sloganmurugan's blog

skill training

phaguni dai, a traditional birth attendant, learns on a mannikin how to resuscitate a newborn baby.

the camel

i remember this from school : is this by ogden nash?

for centuries in desert lands,
the camel tramped the burning sands.
no other beast could stand the heat,
no other had such well padded feet.
but now he doesn't travel far -
the arabs use a motor car.

"O tell me, why is your dhenki so noisy?
Because there is no paddy in it to pound.
Why is there no paddy in it?
Because I did not harvest any.
Why did you not harvest any?
Because I did not sow any.
Why did you not sow any paddy?
Because I did not till my field.
Why did you not till your field?
Because the frogs did not sing.
Why did the frogs not sing?
Because it did not rain........"

(Chattisgarhi song)

a piece of glass

i just concluded a 2 day meeting with village health workers of villages within the achanakmaar sanctuary. again, the issue of the NREGA comes up. the health workers are angry, and give three written complaints: some who did not receive any wages at all for work done in 2008 and 2009; some who received part-wages, but for whom rs. 50 was deducted on some pretext or the other. others write that they were asked to pay rs. 50 for the photograph for the job card and those who could not pay did not get the job card: some got the card, but no payments are made without a photoID, so have not got wages.
we have worked hard, and we needed the money, they said, and we did not get it in time. now the rains are delayed, and the fields have dried up. with debts mounting, our menfolk have started migrating. to bilaspur, to bhopal, do delhi.
phulsita's husband and son-in-law have migrated to faridabad where they work in a glass factory. on monday her son-in-law called her say he had got a piece of glass in one eye and could not open it and hence had not gone to work. doctors are expensive, he told her over the phone when she urged him to seek care.
how did your son-in-law, a forest dweller who has only ever done some agricultural work, end up in a glass factory, i asked. well, she replied, beggars cant be choosers.
so now she waits for news of her son-in-law's eye: has he sought care? could someone take the piece of glass out? will he be able to see normally?
who is responsible for this? his own carelessness or the doctor who charges an unaffordable fees? the employer who does not provide safety precautions to the worker? the failed monsoon? or the NREGA that did not pay wages when it should have: a weekly payment that would have helped to prevent unmanageable debt and perhaps prevented this migration?