Farzina and the Cockroach, Hospital Visits, and some Local "Celebrities"

So it looks like I have little bit of time before we leave for Warangal so I'll take the opportunity to give an update. So on Tuesday night Farzina was outside her room on the phone but had left her door open. She saw something scurry across the floor in the hall into her's and Caitlins room. Unsure of what she saw, she and Kim searched through the room using Kim's flashlight but couldn't find anything, so everybody just went to bed. The next morning as Farzina and Caitlin were chatting, Farzina was going through her bag when this huge cockroach scurried up her arm (which apprantly felt very fuzzy). That's when I heard her scream from mine and Kim's room and she ran outside. When I took a peek in her room I saw this thing which was, without a doubt, the largest insect I have ever seen in my life!!!! It was so disgusting!!!!! Caitlin was finally able to trap and throw it outside and that was how our Wednesday started.

After breakfast the four use, accompanied by one of the CHAI workers, took a tour of the government hospital, which I talked about in my previous post. I'll add a little more here though. The place was quite huge. Unlike hospitals in Canada, this place had two separate buildings. One for inpatient services and one for outpatient (OP) services. Like I said before, we took tour of the OP building, talked to a couple of docs and counsellors. The only thing missing was that we never got a chance to talk with any of the nurses. But what we did learn about was quite informative. There seemed to be a lot of services in OP dedicated to HIV, STD prevention, treatment, and counselling as well as Prevention of Parent-to-child transmission programs and services which, I thought, was pretty great. One thing that was interesting to us was how some of those we talked to had the view that Western medicine relys predominantly on technology as opposed to clinical skills. I would argue, however, that while the technology has been a major asset in improving the care we give patients, as nurses, or doctors, or PT's, or OT's, etc. etc. skills are still used a great deal and play just as important a role, actually more-so, then the role of technology.



This morning, Thursday, we visted another hospital. This time it was faith based institution. The hospital is named St. Theresa Hospital, and it has connections with CHAI. They several other hospitals throughout India, as well as a hospital in Ghana. It was very interesting to compare this hospital to the government one. St. Theresa's was very impressive. Just the atmosphere alone was so warm and welcoming as opposed to the often cold sterile environment of many of our hospitals back home as well as the hospital from yesterday. I actually felt quite at home and and content to be there. Being faith based, St. Theresa's is Catholic hospital, offering the same services as any hospital in Calgary or Toronto, but one thing that makes this place quite special is that they have an orphanage. Children/babies would be left there because of whatever circumstances and they were taken in, raised and cared for, by the sisters. Up until a few years ago, these kids could also be apoted by families within India and abroad. However, this has been stopped temporarily but will hopefully continue in the future. While the kids are there, they go to school and are raised to just like any other child would be. We met the sister who takes care of them...she was such a sweet lady :) The hospital also has a nursing school attached to it. We met with some of the students which was pretty neat. Their system of teaching is intense, to say the least. The students even have a lab component which incorporates labs from micro and biochemistry. They also have their own SIM lab, which I think gets used pretty extensively. I was very very impressed with the school.


Us with the sister who takes care of the orphans :)




The nursing school

I also have to say, that I am quite impressed with the work of Catholic organizations in India. I know that there are other NGO's that do things that are just as great, but the ones we have seen have been Catholic and their work has been quite remarkable.

Outside the hospital with one of the sisters (in the orange), she is a teacher at the nursing school. The other sister (in the blue) is from CHAI.

On a less deep note, it would appear that the four of us have become local "celebrities"!! Our pictures showed up in two different newspapers today!! One of the pictures was of us standing along the bridge on Tank Bund road. We had been on our way back to CHAI from Lumbini park couple of days ago and I guess a photographer snapped our photo. Then we found out that at the government hospital we had visited on Wednesday our photos were also taken there. In that situation, an MP had come to the hospital that day for an inaugurational ceremony of the GI department getting an endoscope. The media was there and a photographer was snapping our photos which ended up in the newspaper!!. We were informed about this by one of the sisters at St. Theresa's Hospital today. LOL!!! We're not that special in Canada though!!
Page 5 of "The Hindu", a local newspaper. Believe it or not, that's Kim, Farzina, me and Caitlin standing on the right!!! -- Unfortunately we couldn't find the other newspaper that had published our picture at the government hospital :( But at least we got this one!!!