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