June 11: Ellumaram Village Visit

The local area center

We spent the day at a nearby village updating medical histories, passing out medication and screening individuals for sickle cell. The environment here is very different from other hospitals in the country. There are around 28 villages that the hospital caters to comprising around 20,000 individuals. There are 8 area centers that each have 2 nurses/health animators that are there every day and are responsible for seeing the patients that the area center is responsible for. The Gudalur Adivasi Hospital can be very far from some villages so patients cannot necessarily make it to the hospital every time they need medical attention. It is during these times that they go to the area center to receive care and medicine. All of the employees in the hospital and area centers are all Adivasi’s (or tribals) from the nearby villages so the hospital has a very big sense of community and most of the time everyone knows everyone else that is in the hospital. It’s almost as if it is one big family at the hospital.

Walking to the village

                This comes into play with genetic counseling because nothing is very private in these parts. Pretty much everyone in the villages can tell you what is going on with other members of the villages. It is also very common for individuals to marry other members in the same village which is why the sickle cell gene has thrived in these tribes for so long. A big component of genetic counseling here has been to educate individuals about marrying individuals outside of their communities to reduce the prevalence of the sickle cell gene and the chance of passing it on to future generations. The health animators explained to me that more and more individuals are starting to marry outside of the community.

Vignesh (2 yrs) at the v

Today I went with one of the health animators, two lab technicians, and one counselor to a nearby village called Ellumaram. It was about a 30 minute walk from the hospital to the village but it was a nice day so it wasn’t too bad. Each family receives a family genetic card that has all the screening information for each member of the family. We screened about 10 different individuals (mainly children) in the village. The counselor, Rathi, explained to the parent why the kids were being screened but pretty much everyone in this community is aware of sickle cell and that everyone needs to be screened at some point. As of right now around 16,000 individuals have been screened for sickle cell trait. After spending the day at the village we headed back around 2 to eat lunch back at the area center near the hospital and then headed to the hospital. I wanted to finish up some more information for my pamphlets.

           

The family genetic card; Lakshmi measuring the weight of the babies, Another Lakshmi recording down all the information

Reena, Kala, and Sakthivel having their blood drawn by Rathi for their sickle cell screening 

    We were going to go out for dinner but Anna and Hayley were sick all day so Nicola, my sister and I went into town to get one last mango shake since we were leaving tomorrow and picked up some dinner in town and went back to the hostel to eat with Anna and Hayley. Some of the others back at the hostel were cooking up some snacks and it ended up being on big party when we got back. There were around 20 different people that were in and out of the hostel all night and we had a great time just chilling and getting to know everyone that was there.