Nameste from Northeast India! I'm now at Makunda hospital, a hospital that serves the poor here in this very remote location in the middle of a jungle. The hospital is quite successful, on some days serving more than 450 patients from around the region. Many patients come from hours away to receive treatment. In addition, the hospital has two schools- a nursing school, and a "regular" school (K-10th grade) with over 700 students. It's clear that God has blessed this hospital over the years!
Today I will be able to see the community health project at the hospital. I'm excited to hear the stories- they're always interesting and amazing! At the last hospital it was neat to see how one community banded together to make their situation better. At this particular village, there was no electricity (a common problem in some areas). None. You can imagine what that means for daily life- considering almost everything we do requires electricity, it's a completely different lifestyle.
With the assistance of the community health project workers, community leaders met together to try and fix this problem. They learned how to write up an "official" petition to the state government, in which they asked for electric power lines to be installed. After the leaders and nearly 500 village inhabitants signed it, they sent the petition to the state. Due to the help provided by the community health project at Fatehpur hospital, the village now has electric power.
Often, it's things we take for granted that are lacking in the villages. The main problems include lack of electricity, lack of sanitation, easily preventable diseases, etc. It doesn't help that most of the village inhabitants are exceedingly poor, most earning less than $1 per day. The learning resources and training that the Community Health Projects offer provide hope to the village. It's stories like the one above that make Community Health so cool for me, since it is clear that progress is possible and is happening!
I'll try to write up a few more of these great stories and pictures in a future post!
No comments:
Post a Comment