Project Update

Things are going so well with the Project. Currently, we are developing our evaluation and monitoring methodology so that we can take baseline measurements of the first wave of beneficiaries for the community centre, ie the neglected elderly. We will be administering a quality of life questionnaire, a full medical check up and several baseline investigations, including full blood count for anaemia. It was decided that it would not be helpful if I was present when the QOL questionnaire is administered, as the results might be skewed in one way or another, by the presence of a (clearly quite well fed) foreigner watching them answering questions about their life and food intake. However, what is quite exiting is that I will be doing all the medicals, which will be done after the QOLQ. It will be the first time I have wielded a stethoscope since the Tsunami camp and I am looking forward to it, I have missed patient contact.

In addition to this, a young American student from St Olaf College, somewhere in the States, is interested in mental health and will be assessing the mental health status of all the elderly in the village for her undergraduate project. She comes at a fortuitous time and will contribute greatly to our project. If re-assessed at the same time as the evaluation process, in 12m, it will give us a good idea of whether mental has been improved by any of the services in the community centre, as we will be able to compare those who attend with those who do not. For once, a student project at RUHSA will not be stand-alone (and leave alone). RUHSA is bulging at the seams with amazing projects, information, data sets; mostly done by foreigners who come, use RUHSA’s resources for 4m, do a fantastically interesting project, but then leave. Nothing further happens with the project recommendations or data as the key movers and enthusiasts for the project have left. The only activity is the gathering of the dust on the paper copies in the various staff members' offices. Rarely is the audit or learning cycle completed, but there is so much useful which could be done with it all. I hope this marks the beginning of an ideological change whereby projects must be done for RUHSA’s benefit, and not just for the interest of the foreign student.

As if that wasn't thrilling enough, Dr John, the Director of RUHSA has asked me to help him develop a GP training program at RUHSA and to try and get accreditation for the MRCGP (Int). It is very early days yet, and not common knowledge, so if you meet someone from CMC or RUHSA, don't say a word, but it would be utterly perfect for RUHSA's future to secure it as a place of excellence for GP training. India doesn't have a formalised GP training system; any doctor who has finished his/her internship can set up as a family doctor. Medicine in India is entrenched in hierarchy and money, most students are from the upper echelons of society, therefore the incentive to work as a family doctor in rural parts of India is practically invisible, however, the government, in their National Health Policy 2002 (see link on left), which is a very interesting ideological statement of intent, advocates the importance of developing primary care in India.

As if that weren't enough, the current module I am working on in my MSc is on "Research Methods in Primary Care: Developing Primary Care"; how perfect is that?! This trip gets more freaky with co-incidence the longer I am out here!