Things seem so easy when you are planning them in your head, there’s almost this smooth flow that your heart refuses to agree might get deviated. Children are difficult, and so are pediatric camps. We had a plan this Saturday, when 14 young volunteers marched to a small area in Vangani to examine, educate and counsel children. This camp was going to be way different than any other camp that we had conducted before.
Most of the pediatric infections are caused due to a lack of basic hygiene in the rural population, so this time we switched our medicine distribution table with a table for distribution of “hygiene kits”. This concept was borrowed from a fellow volunteer organization called “Helpies” that functions at IGGMC Nagpur. Our kits consisted of a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, a bottle of hair oil, a bandage and a chocolate! We wanted the children to feel a sense of novelty and belonging towards the kits; so we turned our distribution desks to gift-wrapping stations (headed by Raj) and awakened our inner artists to decorate every kit with stickers and ribbons and all things pretty. That worked well, the kits were attractive, and the kids were lured; and thence began the crowd. (Benefit 1: 160 kids own a toothbrush. Benefit 2: We got more kids for examination by dangling the attractive kits as bait.)
The camp was organized with the help of Shabnam Sayed Education Society on the occasion of the birthday of Mr. Maroof Sayed. Kudos to Mr. Maroof for coming up with this novel idea of celebrating this day! A certain Vakil Sahib in the village graciously invited us into his own house to seat, educate and register the children while a small shop 500m away became our examination and distribution hub. (Benefit 3: Dr. Vinit and the organizers running around lost some weight.)
There was a slight delay in the arrangements and the camp started by 11 am. The kids were seated in Vakil Sahib’s house waiting for their turn. I was once told of a man in Gadchiroli who roams around with a nail-cutter in the villages and cuts the nails of every kid that he comes in contact with; and we had it to give it a shot! So we did. Our registration personnel Neha and Rachana began cutting every child’s nails with utmost dedication. A skeptic would tell us that the nails will grow back soon, but we are going to choose to look at the probable benefits. (Benefit 4: The kids find it easier to do daily activities with short nails and hopefully try to inculcate the habit. If not, at least we saved them some dirt ingestion for 2 weeks. We’ll do it again.)
Divesha and I had big plans for educating the kids; we got our laptops with various attractive cartoon videos. But alas, we couldn’t tame the kids enough to seat them quietly in a place and watch the video and the idea had to be dropped after some desperate efforts. (Note: Get speakers next time. If it’s loud enough, maybe they won’t have to be so quiet.) We switched to shouting at the top of our voices, showing them correct techniques of brushing their teeth, and showing them hideous pictures of what tobacco and alcohol can do. We realized that calling the kids to the front to demonstrate what we had taught helped grab their attention; so that is what we tried to resort to. The education was further carried on by Gauri, who while distributing the kits, gave basic pointers of personal hygiene to each and every kid. The utility and novelty of the kit was emphasized. Kudos for that! (Benefit 5: At least 60% of the kids learnt the proper technique of brushing, albeit roughly. The promises of not having tobacco seemed sincere, but without rigorous follow-up we’ll never know for sure).
We are extremely glad that the registration was done well and all between 5-12 years were registered. We also procured the contact numbers of 134 out of 160 children. We then sent the children 500m away for anthropometry. Khushboo did a wonderful job of managing the chaos of the children while checking their height and weight. This was followed by our mathemagician table feat. Dr. Ramsha and Jash who put their minds, souls and calculators in estimating anthropometric parameters (BMI, Ht. for age, Wt. for age) and malnutrition grades (IAP and McLaren’s classification). The work at this table helped us have wonderful data that will definitely help with follow up! This was followed by general examination by Joaquim and Niharika, who were well equipped with everything from stethoscopes to otoscopes and did thorough detailed examination of every child. This did slow down the speed of the line a little but was absolutely worth it! Niharika also gave a home visit to certain kids for genitourinary and vaginal examinations. We came across a lot of nutritional problems, skin infections and URTIs. Referrals to doctors were suggested and basic deworming was done. Anti-lice oils were also distributed. (Benefit 6: We have good data regarding the nutrition status of children. At risk children have been identified to the best of our ability).
Luck was on our side when a guest nutritionist and a group of 12-16 year olds from school showed up at the same time. Ma’am was gracious enough to brief them about good food habits! This was followed by a counseling session regarding drug addiction, distribution of deworming tablets and individual examination. An emphasis was made on the menstrual problems while examining this age group. We were lucky to have utmost attention and discipline from them and I sincerely hope that the session was beneficial to them. (Benefit 8: We got to counsel adolescents.)
Post-lunch, we got to witness Vangani waterfalls(Benefit 9?) as the streets were flooded. We thought of wrapping up but the enthusiasm of the kids, waiting in the heavy rains for their turn churned our hearts and we continued. We winded up by 5pm with a smile and wet shoes.
Usually camps end here and we can never really know whether follow ups happened. This time we were determined to not be just an instantaneous event in their lives, we wanted to be persistent. The 134 contact numbers will now come to our rescue. Switch is going digital. Volunteers will be given 1-5 kids’ numbers to be counseled and followed up. Let’s hope this new venture becomes a new success!
