Medical Camps, Fundraising, and Clothing Drive

It has been a while since the last post but a lot of activity has been going on at Sangam India. Here are the major points.

1. First of all, since the Ophthalmology Department is keeping their postgraduate students busy for the next two weeks, it looks like the audiovisual camp is to be postponed. We hope to run it on August 17th.
2. We tried to follow up on the dental cases last week and we came to the realization that the only real way to address this issue was through a dental camp. This is because most of the people simply cannot take the time off to go to the dental hospital for treatment, even though the cost of treatment at the hospital is quite small. We have been working with the Community Dentistry department at Sri Ramachandra University to run a dental camp this month. They have been very kind and understanding of our cause. This Saturday we are going with them to help them understand the facilities available and the general condition of the area. Then, on the following Saturday, August 9th, we hope to run a dental camp.
3. Fundraising: Pragnya and her team have been trying to figure out the best way to run a bake sale during the SRU annual 'culturals' event. This would also go a long way to raise awareness of our cause.
4. Many of the girls are working on organizing the clothes which we plan to give away on Independence Day (August 15th.)
   
5. Finally, Aslesha and Ritin are working together to help us achieve Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status from the Tamil Nadu state government. This project is still in infancy but we have big hopes for it in the future.
   

Upcoming Plans for Sangam India

We had a great lunch meeting yesterday and we have a lot of plans for the upcoming month!

1. At the top of the list is following up on the cases from Sunday's medical camp. There were numerous cases of dental caries and these children need to be referred to the hospital for low-cost dental care. If necessary, we have to be willing to pay for these children to recieve adequate treatment.
2. Our next event is going to be an audiovisual screening camp for people of all ages. We are planning on doing this on August 3rd and we need to get the ENT and Audiology departments on board for this.
3. For Independence Day, August 15th we hope to give clothes to each of the slum residents. This involves the collecting and organizing of the numerous donations we have, as well as collecting as many more as we can.
4. We are planning on running a gynecology and cervical screening camp next month as well. The date is still TBD.
5. In terms of PR, we are going to put some information about our project in the Caduceus magazine as well as possibly having a stand in the SRMC "Culturals" event.
   

Extra! Extra! Sangam India is in the Times!

We are excited to announce that we are in today's (July 21st, 2008) edition of the Times of India. The article covers the medical camp that we held yesterday. We're on page 4 of the Chennai edition of the newspaper. Click on the link above and you can navigate to the epaper edition of this day's paper. Below is the article that was included:

MALNUTRITION CASES TREATED

Sangam India holds health camp for kids

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai: As part of its efforts to provide better healthcare to children living in slums, Sangam India, a group formed by socially-conscious medical students residing in Porur, organised a free health camp for children of Ramavaram on Sunday.
Nearly 50 medical staff including seven doctors of Sangam India screened children of slum dwellers as part of their first community service programme since the formation of the group in March this year. Nearly 110 children less than seven years of age benefitted from the camp. “Most of us (doctors) study in Sri Ramachandra University and we thought of selecting a locality that is nearer to our institution. So, we started our first camp in Ramavaram,” Dr Koushik of the group told TOI.
Apart from a general checkup, the children were screened by practitioners of specialists in orthopaedics, cardiology, dental health and dermatology. Most of the cases were for dental attention, while many cases of malnutritions were detected. All those needing further medical attention would be provided free treatment by Sangam India. “There were many cases of skin disease and dental infection. At the camp, medicines worth Rs 12,000 was provided free of cost and we are planning to conduct similar free health camps in other areas as well,” said Dr Karthik, another representative of Sangam India.

Thanks a lot to Koushik for helping us get into this paper!

Medical Camp

Today we held our first medical camp at the Ramavaram slum. It was a pediatric health camp and we had representations from the departments of Pediatrics, Orthopedics, and Dentistry.

First and foremost, we would all like to thank Koushik for the immense amount of work he put into making this all possible. From arranging essentials such as finding willing doctors to work with us to the more mundane tasks of arranging a tent and purchasing the drugs, his work was of immense importance. There is simply no way such a project would have been conceivable without his help. We would also like to thank the doctors for taking time out of their days to make this medical camp possible.

Most of us arrived at the slum in the early morning, at about 8AM. With the help of the children, we set up the tables and chairs and unpacked the drugs. Divya, Haresh, Santoshi and Benedicta went to begin collecting the names of the children. I (Sriram) went with some of the residents to put up the banners which we had made for the event.

The event itself was scheduled to start at 9, and we were ready, however, because most of the doctors were on rounds at the hospital, we had to wait for some time in order to actually get started. The event began at about 10AM. Nivedita and Shilpa worked at the registration counter, and Alex, Apoorva, and Siddharth worked at the pharmacy. The rest of us worked as go-betweens for the various departments, guiding the children and their parents through. While it was a little chaotic at first - we didn't think to bring enough pens, for example, and we didn't have disinfectant solution and had to go purchase some - things later worked out more smoothly. We saw approximately 80 children and conditions ranging from vitamin A deficiency to abscesses were treated.

The last of the patients came around 1:00, and we cleaned up and wrapped up the camp. It was a very exciting and rewarding day and we believe it was a success!

Click here to view photos from this event

Website Launch

Our new website is up! Check it out at http://sangamindia.org. We have also given this blog a facelift to now match the theme of the site. The blog URL has now changed to http://blog.sangamindia.org.

If you find any bugs or glitches in the site, please let me know at webmaster@sangamindia.org

Medical Camp and Upcoming Website

Some news:

This Sunday we are running a medical camp for the kids at Ramavaram. We need all the support we can get! We'll have more info soon about the timing and location.

We are making a new website as well! This is going to be located at http://sangamindia.org. Please let us know if you would like any help on the site and let us know if you have any feedback on the design!

Ramavaram, July 13th

Today was another great day at Ramavaram. Since many of us weren’t able to make it last week and the children asked about us, we thought it would be nice to go and visit them. Member turnout was low today because most people were either not in town or busy with other things. We were able to manage fine though, because even the turnout for the children was a bit lower this time than usual. We arrived there and played the usual games with the children, and we added London Bridge and Ring around the Roses today. We had candy for the kids, and it was much less chaotic this time to distribute it to everyone. It’s good that we are spending a lot of time with the children, but we need to quickly start arranging other programs for the children. If anyone has any ideas or would like to help us with curriculum set up, we would greatly appreciate it. You can contact us at ramavaram@gmail.com.

July 6th Visit to Ramavaram

On July 6th, the gang headed out to Ramavaram again to play with the kids. We wanted to maintain our presence there, having not been there the previous weekend, and improve our relationship with the children there.

It was a great trip. One of the fun things about the visit was the fact that we had so many new faces with us. Because the second year had exams, they weren't able to come. But the lack of their presence did not hinder the project at all; we had many new recruits from the BDS school with us today, thanks to Nazneen, our one-woman BDS recruitment team.

The kids were very excited to see us as they saw us approaching along the bridge. Most of them ran up to meet us, full of excitement. Though they asked about the people we weren't able to come, they were happy to embrace the new visitors into their community. They led us by hand to the river, which is currently reduced to a few streams. We crossed over these streams and began to play. First we sat down the kids in a circle (which was a task in itself, the kids being so playful.) We then commenced to play name games to help everyone to get to know each other. This was followed by the kids dancing for some time. We managed to organize the kids again to play a version of "Duck Duck, Goose" (only, for Tamil, we made it "Adi, Adi, Pudi.") They enjoyed this a lot. We spent some more time with the kids more individually before we left, handing out chocolate eclairs to the children on our way out. All in all, it was a very exciting day.

Click here to see the photos from this trip