Pankhudi Delhi’s first health camp went quite well thanks to the efforts of everyone involved. We were especially grateful to the Rotary Club for providing us with the facilities needed to pull this off.

On the 20th, Reema and I did a brief survey of the camp to find out the number of children we could expect to see on the 27th and the kind of problems most had. Almost all the parents said their children were healthy, although they did dubiously agree to bringing them to the camp next week. We surveyed about 40 households, and they had an average of 3 children per household (rough estimate).
On the 27th, we were lucky because the weather held up and things went off smoothly. The Rotary club arranged for a doctor from Safdarjung Hospital to come visit the camp. A member of the Rotary Club(a doctor) came along to help dispense the medicine based on the doctor’s prescription. Both the children and parents were reluctant initially to come see the doctor, but once they realized that the process was not very long, it didn’t involve any pain or trouble, and was free, almost all the families with children came.
Altogether the doctor did a check up of 50 children. The most common problems found were conjunctivitis, stomach worms, cough/cold, and ear infections in some cases. There were a few exceptions such as a child with a weak heart and another one with possible TB who were already undergoing treatment for the same. A sad case was that of Shabnam, one of our regulars at the Protsahan activity, who was in great pain due to some kind of water build up in her leg. I didn’t know what she seemed to be suffering from, but it was evident that it was serious. The doctor recommended that she undergo an operation and asked her family to bring her to the hospital that evening. All the children with problems were given free medicines. After the medicines ran out, a list was made of requirements and these will probably be supplied to the families in the coming weeks.
Volunteer attendance was very good with 8 of us present: Reema, Naval, Amit, Richa, Rohit, Neha, Nitin and I (Vidha).
All in all it was a successful event and we hope we can organize more similar activities in the near future.
August 02nd 2008 Posted to
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