Five Minutes…Or An Hour

These were the words our bus driver said on the way back from a long day shadowing a mobile medical clinic. The trip there had been long and hot, without air conditioning or windows we could put down, and he assured us that the trip home would be short…unless there was traffic. Wow, Mumbai traffic. It seems like it is always rush hour. But as Meaghan so eloquently said, our temporary inconveniences, like broken air conditioning and traffic jams, are frivolous compared to the deep social problems we witnessed today while shadowing AmeriCares India.

I could not help but compare the mobile van to the mobile clinics I volunteered at with another GW group in Ecuador. The mobile van here certainly had tougher logistical challenges, including setting up shop right on the street and in a small garage/warehouse as opposed to an entire school campus. The process seemed a bit frantic, but that was likely due in large part to our disrupting presence. Another downside is there was little privacy for the patients, which may have prevented some from sharing the true reason for the visit, especially the sex workers that we learned were among the group. However, one huge positive of AmeriCares’ mobile vans that I was pleased to hear from Dr. Purbish Parikh is that they visit each neighborhood every 15 days, so there is continuity of care. If patients have chronic diseases, AmeriCares gives them medicine for that entire 15-day period and then returns with more. And, this reliability also means that patients come to trust the doctors and the organization. This was not true of the mobile clinic program we saw in Ecuador, which might get to a village once very three months at most. I came away from that experience jaded by the idea of mobile clinics as I had handed out five-day supplies of vitamins to kids who wouldn’t get more for months and two-week supplies of heart medication to patients who needed consistent care. I am pleased to see AmeriCares has limited its focus enough to provide reliable, consistent care.

Despite AmeriCares fervent efforts, however, the mobile vans could not address the community’s root challenges including clean water, sanitation, and waste management. We talked about how essential water is and how it seems these high-level challenges seem too daunting for any one organization to take on, or too costly for the government to intervene. I will be interested to hear and share ideas throughout the rest of the trip about what can be done to solve these structural level problems.

Perhaps most notable from the day was that, in the face of such daunting problems, the people we met were surprisingly happy and incredibly friendly. I enjoyed in particular joking with some of the local boys about Bollywood actors (through Rashi, one of our Hindi speakers!) and hearing some of the little girls sing.