It’s been really interesting seeing how medicine is done at the MGMC & RI, and we are especially grateful to Dr. Hanifah teaching us so much during rounds in the ICUs. Here’s a group picture of all of us on our last day, the man on the left is the PG, or resident, on service. Ladies, please note the mustache.
Today we saw another case of organophosphate poisoning, this time given via injection! It turns out they can get syringes very easily at the pharmacies without a prescription, which I guess shouldn’t be surprising to us since they can get all the azithromycin they want too, maybe sometimes they want to get it IV? Anyway, his arm didn’t look too good, we didn’t linger in the RICU today as it was stifling-hot in there, but I hope he was on some abx, because I don’t think he used medical injection-grade organophosphates. Per the admitting doctor it was another case of “love gone wrong.” It’s sad how many suicide attempts we’ve seen in our few days here.
As Brian mentioned we ran into two Americans, Matt and Chris from Dalit Solidarity, who seem to be doing a lot of the stuff we were talking about the other night. I don’t want to belabor the point, but I really am just so happy that we found someone doing what we all agreed was the most important, which is improving the basics, including providing PCP-like care! You know I love my ID peeps, but before we can have good efficacious HIV treatment we need these people to have the basics that allow them to take that medication and avoid other infections, and prevention! They even taught us a little Tamil, which is too bad we’re leaving soon!
And since you wanted to see some pictures of the ‘stashes, here is a cute group photo. Alas, the facial hair is still sparse in this picture, but I am confident in a few days they will really be very nice. In the background is the Auroville dome which you can’t really see on account of glare. Also maybe Brian’s camera had too many options for the man whose meditation we interrupted to have him take this photo. Perhaps when Dr. Yadavalli rejoins the group tonight or tomorrow we will get another group picture. Oh man, speaking of that… I better work on my presentation…
CaseIndiaTrips 2 