Harsh Realities

It's been just over 20 days since I have started my Compulsory Rotatory Internship at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College, Jabalpur. What a big name for a college and a hospital that is downsized by the very ethics and purpose it stands! Moving from Pune to Jabalpur, from AFMC to NSCBMC it has been an about turn in my perception of health care.
Where in AFMC I never had to think once before rubbing my hands with Sterilium in the wards, or not touching the newborns without disinfecting my hands, or advising the patients to go and buy some medicine; I now have to think so much! There is no Sterilium, newborns are handled like any other general patient, intracaths are inserted without much thought about asepsis, patients beg to receive free medication, it is all so shaking and true.
The India as it is, has been visualized by me. A medical college where the corridors smell of shit, where patients and their next of kin cook and feed their children in open grounds, where they stand in a line for drinking water which God knows how drinkable it really is! These sights have shaken me beyond imagination and unfortunately I have to just watch it like that. I can't do anything about it. All I can offer is some sympathy and kind words. What do I say to a father whose son has been bitten by a rabid dog and who has come to the hospital on a holiday demanding a free injection? He doesn't have the money to buy a vaccine. I send him to another government run hospital where there might be some hope of getting a free vaccine. What do I do when a newborn is actively seizuring in front of me and the basic medicine required for him is not available in the ward? I just stand helpless looking at the residents and the senior doctors to do something meaningful. The poverty, the helplessness, the lack of resources just overwhelms me.
I guess I am feeling this way because it's just been 20days for me here and coming from one of the best colleges in the country to a place which is like this is really hard to digest. But for now I feel truly helpless.