On the 7th of July' 2019, me and our Switch team of 9 MBBS students, 2 skilled interns and 1 physiotherapist volunteer along with the skillful Robin Hood Army were fortunate enough to organise a camp for the underprivileged children at a rural community at Wakad, Pune.
Despite of the rainy weather and damp conditions, we were more than overwhelmed to see the willingness of the parents who were so enthusiastic to bring their children for the screening and thus made us feel that we are actually helping the needful. We screened about 62 paediatric patients and 20-25 adult patients.
For a period of 3 hours, we took the complete history to thoroughly understand their health issues, did proper general examination and anthropometrics by recording all the data provided and then the physician provided the required information and medications to the children and their parents.
A session for counselling the parents about childcare, nutritional requirements of growing age and hygiene maintenance was also conducted. By record, we realized that the most common problem faced by the paediatric group specifically was malnutrition and weakness.
This was primarily due to the lack of information and resources of the parents. So in order to give our bit in overcoming this problem, we instructed the parents about the developmental and nutritional requirements of their children and for themselves to breakthrough malnutrition.
We administered the children tablets for deworming and Oral rehydration solution as and when required. The volunteers even cut the nails of the children themselves, to make them understand the importance of personal hygiene. Along with this, iron tablets, multivitamins, paracetamol, citrizine tablets, etc. were prescribed as per the need.
The Robin Hood Army discussed the importance of menstrual hygiene with the girls entering the pubertal age and were a great support during all the screening procedures. In addition, one of the volunteers Sanya Kad, along with her parents arranged a healthy meal, which was distributed amongst the indigent people as a treat after their check up.
Everything was managed quite well by Palak Marfatia, who leaded the camp and supervised as well as assisted in the duties allotted to the volunteers. At the end of the day, all the tiredness was overshadowed by the feeling of happiness as it literally felt like all the hardwork ever done in the process of becoming a doctor was worth the smiles we were able to give to the needful by the means of our knowledge.
Along with all the experience, we gathered alot of blessings for helping to cure the ones, who couldn't afford to cure themselves. Really proud to be a part of an organisation that is selflessly trying to reach the underprivileged sections of the society to bring about a change in the healthcare sector and aiming to improve their quality of life.
I hope to be a part of many more such camps and highly appreciate all the efforts by Switch India Organisation and the Robin Hood Army.
