Rural India

Today we spent our day with IMPACT India, an organization that works in rural areas of India working to close gaps in health care and implementation. It was a long day that included bumpy roads, visits to schools and health clinics and lots of rain. IMPACT works with the local communities and Indian government to improve the health conditions of the families living in rural areas. Rural India is beautiful, but the people who live there are very poor, most living below the poverty line. They live in areas that are difficult to reach, so they are often over looked.

Our first stop was to an elementary school where we witnessed one of IMPACT’s successful programs. They have implemented a health ambassador model into each classroom. Classes elect health monitors that are responsible to conducting weekly examinations of classmates. These examinations include checking for clean hands, clothes and teeth and asking about aches and possible fever. It was like watching little doctors at work, they were taking their jobs so seriously.

One of the highlights of my day was working with another classroom of adolescent girls at a residential school in the community. We listed as they talking about anemia with their teacher and then we presented a lesson on the importance of good nutrition. All of the girls come from families below the poverty line, so a residential school provides them with daily meals that their family could not. However, many girls drop out of school around this age because of family obligations or even marriage and children. We tried to express to them the importance of staying in school for as long as they can.

At the end of the trip we walked through the primary health center for the area, which covers 60,000 people. We walked through a room where a woman was sitting with a baby she had delivered just two days earlier. It was a girl, her fifth girl. In India, girls are still seen as inferior to boys, so this woman will continue to have children until she has a son. This is just one of the many issues facing the health system in India. IMPACT is working hard to help. In the case of this mother, IMPACT will make sure that her daughter receives all of her immunizations free of charge and will work with her to make sure that she breastfeeds for at least six months.

Today was an eye-opening experience. The families living in rural India have hard lives and often live on much less than $1 per day. However, they get up each day and work hard to make sure that they can do they best for their families.