New Experiences: Free Medical Camp for under-privileged folks in the hinterlands of rural India

This will be a new category in my website, where I'll be talking about new experiences not neccessarily always related to coding or anything tech related. It will simply be me recording my involvement in different events which I wanted to help around in. In this particular instance, it was around 4 weeks ago when I got an opportunity to organize and run a Free Medical Camp for under-privileged folks in the hinterlands of rural India.

The camp location was in the village of Baleipur, 3 hours drive from Bhubaneshwar, the capital city of Odissa, one of the states of India.

Image Source: https://d-maps.com/m/asia/india/odisha/odisha55.gif

The medical camp itself is a freely-provided general consultation of any villagers that walk into the camp, along with a prescription of medicines for them, and an eye checkup, all of which is free.

Of course, I was thrilled by the opportunity to not only travel to a completely new part of India I had not previously explored, but also help around the camp in any way possible.

The camp was set to start on the morning of the 21st October, 2023. To reach on time, I flew out from Bangalore to Bhubaneshwar on the 20th night.

20th October, 2023:

I left my house at 2pm, and reached Bhubaneshwar by 6:40 PM. That night, I stayed at the house of the primary organizer of the camp - Dr. Tapan Das.

Upon arriving at the house, Dr. Tapan briefed me about the events of the medical camp. I could be of help in three different ways: recording the names and details of each patient, helping distribute medicine to the people and shadowing the doctors, and a slightly more complex method of helping by setting up a gofundme for the camp.

21st Ocotober, 2023:

We all woke up early at 5, since the camp would start at 9, and the village itself was almost 3 hours away. On the way, we also picked up one of Dr. Tapan's seniors, a doctor who I would end up helping for the vast majority of my time at the camp. Once we reached the camp, we quickly got to setting up the tables and chairs, along with boxes of medicines for us to distribute. At around 9:30, I had my first task at hand; recording down details of patients such as name, blood pressure, location, gender and age. I did this in a diary Dr. Tapan provided me with.

Image Source: The medical camp

Image Source: The medical camp

Image Source: The medical camp

I recorded patients for about two hours before Dr. Tapan told me that along with recording the patient details, I could also help with the distribution of the medicine. This was a bit nerve racking for me, since I knew nothing about what medicine's did what, but the labels on the medicine's really helped. Since most people spoke odia there, it was very hard for me to understand what they were saying. Dr. Tapan's cousin however, was extremely kind and helped translate the medicine names and patient details for me.

Image Source: The medical camp

Image Source: The medical camp

Something I have not yet mentioned much about was the cultural aspect and learnings I gained from the experience. Having grown up most of my life in modernized cities such as Bangalore and Singapore, I had not seen or been around the rural lifestyle. This was part of the reason I wanted to travel to Odissa as well, to fully immerse and educate myself on my lifestyle varies so much with someone who lives in a village. One of the very first things I noticed was the warm relationship everyone had with one another. They all knew each others name, and it seemed to be one large, interconnected family, as compared to the citylife I grew up in, where most people did not even know their neighbour's name. In addition, their eating habits were also vastly different to what I had experienced. They ate with their hands, which while I had of course done several times, it always came back to me as a pleasant surprise.

On the not so bright side however, it deeply both saddened and frustrated me over how many people residing in villages did not have access to basic healthcare. Lots of the issues I heard come up rather often when handing out medicines were everyday illnesses that while may seem harmless to people like us that can cure them easily, for them could be extremely dangerous if not treated early. The camp however, lifted my spirits knowing that Dr. Tapan did this every year, and that he was always there helping them out.

To finish the day off, we all took a picture in front of the banner of the medical camp.

Image Source: The medical camp