The shores of India can now be reached
The ferry service was suspended for 20 years during the country’s 25 year civil war. Over 7,000 civilian lives were lost in the battle between the Sinhalese and the Tamil minority in the northeast, and of course ferry services broke down entirely during the conflict.
This week the students in India have been celebrating Onam, the harvest festival in Kerala. It falls during the first month of the Malayalam calendar and marks the homecoming of King Mahabali. Lasting for 10 days, the festival embraces the culture and traditions of Kerala.
Our team in Trivandrum tell us that “All the students have participated in the Onam Celebrations at Kannammoola house. They have actively involved in filling flowers in the design drawn by Revathy, our housekeeper. Later, Rashmi wearing the traditional costume of Kerala inaugurated the celebrations by lighting the lamps. Manjusha the yoga teacher and her family was also part of the celebrations.
The feast!
The students in India
As we have approached our peak season, 10th & 11th July marked our busiest weekend in Kerala with 11 new Work the World housemates flying into Trivandrum Airport, plus 7 additional arrivals to join the dental outreach project in Amboori.
I flew in a few days before the big arrivals to work with Jay & John, our Programme Managers in India. Jay was busy confirming and reconfirming the final arrangements for the dental outreach, including checking up on the portable equipments, meetings with Dr Smitha the supervisor for the project, briefing the volunteers and making sure the house is ready in the village. Jay’s meticulous organisation ensured that the project got off to a good start. Back in the city, John and I spent a good couple of days visiting our five key partner hospitals in Trivandrum, both government and privately owned to reconfirm hospital introduction time with supervisors. This is essential as busy doctors sometimes forget!
There are some brilliant supervisors in Kerala, my particular favourites are Dr. Tiny Nair (Cardiologist), Dr. Bobby Moses (General Medicine) and Dr Shylaja (Neurologist) who have always made me feel welcome whenever I visit their clinic. I also met new supervisors such as Dr. Shiju (A&E) and Dr Shreedevi (Paediatrician) who have quickly bonded with students and have been praised highly for their teaching. During this trip, I also found the time to sit down for dinner with students at the Vanchiyoor house, who were kind enough to teach me a few cheeky drinking games, which I will have to try out on my friends! We also went shopping together to ‘Fabindia’, which is indeed fabulous and a great place to pick up local crafts. Once I made sure all the students were picked up, introduced to other students, given a good orientation of Trivandrum and introduced to their hospital placement, it was time for me to nip across the Laccadive Sea to Sri Lanka, where the pilot programme launched at the end of June.
Good news for all those student radiographers that have been calling in to enquire about our placements overseas – we’ve finally launched radiography and radiotherapy options at all of our destinations.
Working together with the Society and College of Radiographers, these new opportunities give UK and International students the chance to use and build upon their skills in a completely different environment, gaining on the job experience whilst learning more about the delivery of healthcare in resource-poor countries.
Nepal and India have finished their first dental outreach projects! The teams in Bandipur, Nepal and Amboori, India have been working non-stop for two weeks to try and screen and treat as many people as they can for free. The stats are pretty impressive….
Nepal screened 1047 people, referred 815 and treated 977. As Nepal was something of an unknown – the schools being closed for the summer – we had no idea whether people would respond to the posters and flyers we placed around the area. In the end, hundreds of people turned up and the team had to close off general screenings from Wednesday onwards so that they could treat all the people who had been referred from earlier days in the project. The treatment figure ended up higher than the referrals because people were still turning up in severe pain and our kind hearted students felt it better to work through lunchbreaks to screen and treat at the same time.
India had less students than Nepal, but despite working in a new area we knew the schools were open and who would be able to come to the programme, which gave us a better idea of how people would respond. What you never know with India is how bad each area’s teeth are – Kerala has some of the worst oral hygeine in the country and last year saw almost 80% of those screened needing treatment. In the end, the team screened 900 people, referred 513 and treated 343, showing that 57% of the people turned up had problematic teeth. This implies that teeth in the Western Ghats are generally better than the teeth in the coastal towns from last year!
Our overseas teams are busy, busy, busy! Sunil and Jay have been up to their ears in the first of the Nepal and India dental outreach programmes, Majenda is busy preparing for the launch of this weekend’s Zanzibar dental outreach and Ghana, Arusha and Lake Victoria are at maximum capacity as all the summer students settle in to life overseas.To give them a break and to make it fair, this week I directed the weekly question to the Brighton office. “What 3 words conjure up each destination?”. The answers were likely to be varied- we all deal with different areas of the programmes, some of us have visited the destinations, some of us talk to the houses on a daily basis…… the hope was that the combination of words would give you all a brief insight into each country.
Fiona, our dental outreach competition winner, is just two weeks away from her big prize – the chance to join the Kerala Dental Outreach team in India.
For those of you that need reminding, the video competition was launched last year and we had a huge response from people desperate to tell us why taking part in a project like this could benefit their dentistry studies, and why they should be the ones to win the prize. Fiona’s winning movie can be viewed on the facebook groups, or via this link to our youtube page.
With just two weeks to go, we asked Fiona to let us know how she was getting on with preparations for the trip of a lifetime…
Fiona’s blog…… Leaving on a jetplane!
We often have students come back to us saying that one of the big things they had to learn about in their placement was about what is expected of them in their healthcare role. Different countries have different sets of responsibilities attached to each position. When you are used to working as you do at home, it can take a bit of getting used too!
This week, we asked our students “how does the role of physio / nurse / dentist / medic or midwife differ overseas to what you are used to at home?”.
Saesol shares mate - a traditional Argentinian drink - with the doctors
Natalia from Argentina was the first to respond. The three Scottish dental students in the house have found that their role combines dentistry with elements of nursing and with only two assistants for four dentists, they have to do a lot of the assistants work. Lauren also thinks the “style in Argentina is more old fashioned, in the way that here the dentist says what he is going to do and the patient accepts it. Back in Scotland, there is a lot more questioning from the patient, like the dentist has to justify what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, and presents a list of options to the patient with its implications and posible consequences, so that the patient is fully aware of the procedure and is able to choose”. Briege and Rachael agreed, adding that “treatments are short term, there are not planned in advance as it is in Scotland. There is also no standard treatment, which means that the treatments are more subject to the dentist’s discretion”. They are also all enjoying being called Dr’s – in Scotland they do not get that title!
Lots of students tell us that working on our programmes has given them the chance to work with diseases and illnesses that they never come across at University. We asked our students this week if working overseas has given them the opportunity to work with diseases and illnesses that are rare at home?
Treating malaria is common in Arusha
In Arusha the students were all keen to expand on the differences between what is common at home and how it differs in Tanzania. Candace is from America, where “we don’t see a lot of malaria patients ….and that is quite common here. Malnutrition isn’t really an issue back home either where it is rather prevalent here. Having that opportunity to work with patents suffering from those illnesses has been an eye opening experience. Learning the disease process and treatment options first hand is invaluable to me and could never be replaced by reading about them in a textbook” . Laura has found the same - “on the paediatric ward many of the children are admitted with malaria and some of them here been admitted with TB. With malaria we have learnt what medication to give them, for example Quinine and all tablets. It’s has been really interesting to see tropical diseases that I have never come across”. For British student Louise, it is the very fact that tropical disease is prevalent here that drew her to Tanzania. “I have come here to learn about tropical and infectious diseases. I have seen several cases of malaria already in my first week, which I have never seen in the UK. However, what has also surprised me is that a large prophetic of the patients in the medical ward are suffering from poorly controlled diabetes, also a major problem in the UK. Severe malnutrition also seems very common here, but whilst this is only really seen in the old at home, both young and old suffer here”.
Whenever you spend any length of time away you find a favourite hangout. And whether new students found theirs through old students, a mention was made in a guidebook or it was simply discovered one day by an intrepid bunch that went looking for somewhere else to chill out, it is the “favourite hangouts” that crop up time and time again in their feedback of the trips.
W = Work the World at Afrika beach
Joe is really enjoying discussing the weekly questions with his group in Ghana. It helps him get to know the students better, as well as their lifestyle over in Ghana. This week all his students responded that Berdsack was their favourite spot! It’s “a relatively small local bar right at the bottom of the hill where Work the World house is sitting”. Vanessa and Tania often head down there during the evening and told Joe that “we have our own DJ who plays our favourite Ghanaian songs for us – the ones we have learnt at the weekly bbq’s. It means we have the chance to socialise with the local people and have some beers. Just this last monday we spent the whole night partying hard because Tuesday was a holiday“. Tania said “you can’t imagine the fun we had!”.