I’m talking about ‘community medicine’ or as I believe it is more popularly called in the United States, public health.

When I started this rotation I wondered what I would be doing over the next month. I couldn’t really see the point in moving around the so called unorganized colonies of Delhi, talking to people who have little resources and live in a relatively unclean environment. However, my views changed when we went out in the community. Effectively this was my first visit in slum clusters, and the first visit to such places for the rest of us for that matter.

We were allotted a few families each and were required to assess and formulate plans to improve their social, mental and physical health. As they were all living in deprived conditions, it was obvious that whatever their physical and mental health, their social health was poor.

We attended out-patient clinics which were established in these communities by our medical school. The patients all had similar problems - URI, diarrhea, pyoderma and all sorts of common infectious diseases – all of which are preventable just by having knowledge of the complaint. This actually gave me the feeling that the health status of underdeveloped countries could be improved by providing general practitioners to work for the community, rather than by supplying specialists who are likely to lose contact with basic ground work. It changed my opinion about public health as I can see that it has enormous scope for opportunities and change.
 
Off Duty
Away from the usual busy life of a final year medical student, community medicine rotation allows you a lot of free time. So this month we made the most of the free time we had been awarded with…

I had a backlog of movies that I hadn’t watched due to previous busy rotations, so I went to the theatre almost every third day - nice time that was! I thought that I should visit my friend in Lukhnow, but then realized he was doing his immunology, and one thing was for sure, I didn’t want to spend my time talking about interleukins. So I dropped that idea and decided to go to my home town for a while, although my parents no longer live there as they also shifted to Delhi around six months ago.

I went to visit my old school, after leaving there six years ago. Let me tell you it feels very nice when your old teacher recognizes you after so long and also when you notice how the junior kids have grown up since the last time you saw them. Things haven’t changed much in the last six years. The school is still run in that same small building and I’m sure they’re still understaffed in the science department, but then school is always a different type of fun time, something which I believe you’ll never be able to experience once you get into med school (or maybe its just that feeling of dissatisfaction which goes with your life!).

After that I went to my room mate’s college reunion. This went on until late at night, and with my room mate having drunk a lot, we were then out on the dark streets of Delhi with me searching for a cab! Ultimately our efforts paid off and we were able to find a cab and get back to the hostel. When sleep wore off in the morning, the first thing I realized was that I was already late for my class!

I feel its time to say goodbye now as this nice ‘med log’ time is coming to an end today. I will be starting my general surgery rotation tomorrow and I need to mentally prepare myself for this good, but undoubtedly most demanding, of undergraduate rotations!