Workdays

I haven't figured out this blogger thing yet, I apologize, but I thought I would share a day in the life of a GHO trip to India. . . however, I chose these pictures in the order I wanted, but they loaded in reverse order. I also haven't figured out how to add a caption to a picture, so you will please bear with me.

The picture at the bottom is a sample of the kinds of people we are seeing in clinic each day. We get started about 9:30 with prayer, and then the children and their parents start arriving. these particular children are all from the school operated by Operation Mobilization India, however we have also had neighborhood children and families come in from the town who heard we were having a free clinic. The people stand patiently in line and are logged in by the local (Indian) team members. Then the locally trained health workers (more on them later) take their blood pressures and their weight and assign them to a room. They then sit and wait their turn to see a clinician (our team, plus one Indian doctor). While they wait, Amanda, our team's dental hygienist and either Hannah or Isaac see them, give them a flouride treatment and inspect their teeth, along with giving them a lesson in toothbrushing and a free toothbrush and paste. See the middle picture for Hannah in the middle of this lesson. After seeing a caregiver, if they need medications, the caregiver writes a prescription and they take it to the pharmacy (see the top picture) where it is filled.

They are asked at some point in this venture if they would like prayer and anyone of us can offer this service, or we also have a room set up with a social worker (one of our team) and a translator for counseling and prayer. We have seen anywhere between 150 and 250 patients each day. Our team leader finds this a little frustrating as he feels we are being a little 'underused' - he expected us to see many, many more than this. Actually, tomorrow we expect to see more in the range of 300. We will see.