A once in a lifetime experience helping in hospitals and slum clinics in Jaipur.
For my elective I travelled to the city of Jaipur in the Northern Indian state of Rajasthan for six weeks. Getting off the plane at 3am local time in Delhi and stepping out into a throng of advertising taxi drivers was quite the culture shock for someone who has never left the safety of family holidays in Western Europe.
"The memories from the trip will last with me forever and I am incredibly grateful for the experience I have had. "
For the elective period I would be split between two locations in different departments. The first three weeks were in the emergency department of a large private hospital in the city. Arriving on the first day the calm and quiet stood in stark contrast to my experience of NHS emergency departments.
Over the coming days I would see very similar presentations to those in the UK; Heart and respiratory disease, stroke and diabetes are the leading causes of death in India like in the UK. The man who had been attacked by a leopard seemed quite normal for the team, whereas I think it would have caused quite a stir in my local A+E department in Torquay.
Medicine in India seemed very similar to the UK for those lucky enough to afford it, for those not so lucky the difference was emphasised in my second & third weeks, I was now based in a free to access slum clinic. This hospital was ran to serve the health needs of those in the local area with the aim of increasing health access. During my time we were mainly involved in health outreach projects. We went out into the slums going door to door, we set up pop up clinics on roads and outside temples. The aim of this was to check people for high blood pressure and diabetes and improve their health awareness. The opportunity to do this and be welcomed into people’s homes was a real privilege for me.
Compared to my experience in the first few weeks this felt like I was actually using my medical training to help the local people. The friendliness of the people and the stories they told will stay with me as memories for a very long time and influence my career.
I had an incredible six weeks in India and away from the medicine also saw some incredible forts, palaces and temples. I had a go at the local traditional block fabric printing and blue pottery painting. A street food tour introduced me so the delicious local cuisine, and of course there was a trip to see the amazing Taj Mahal!.
The memories from the trip will last with me forever and I am incredibly grateful for the experience I have had.
