Times of India Article

Coming Together for Health
Students Of Sri Ramachandra Medical College Spend Their Weekends Teaching Kids Good Hygiene Practices
Pushpa Narayan | TNN

The underprivileged children living in Ramavaram have new buddies — 150 medicos of Sri Ramachandra Medical College. Almost every week, they spend time together kicking a football, sharing a meal, or talking about health and hygiene. In the last eight months, the medical students have managed to create health records for all the children living in the area, besides having enrolled many of them in schools.

Today, they know the children not just by their names but also their problems, needs, likes and dislikes. Children like Hamsavalli, Radhika, Pacharas and Dharma know their new "buddies" equally well. They even teach some north Indian and NRI students Tamil, while they pick up English. Almost every weekend, the kids are ready and waiting for the group of young men and women to march in with their white coats and stethoscopes.

"It began with the idea of giving nutritious food to children near our hostel. We cooked it ourselves and took it to their homes. But as we started serving the children, we realised there was more we needed to do. Some of the children needed admission in school, many were malnourished, and almost each one needed to be taught about hygiene," said Sriram Ramgopal, a third year MBBS student, who initiated the project.

When Sriram spread the word, 20 of his college mates decided to support the move. They called it Sangam India. The team decided to adopt one disadvantaged community at a time and to guide it towards self-sufficiency and provide support for a higher standard of living, with special focus on children. "We are now 150. We divided ourselves into groups and adopted every house in the area. We followed the buddy system, where we make friends with everyone before we introduced the idea of hygiene," says his batchmate Ritin Goyal.

The students then visited every house and enrolled entire families. Besides collecting details about their medical history, they maintained records of the residents’ height, weight, blood pressure and other parameters. For children they developed a database of growth details, nutrition levels and vaccine records. "From this data we planned what we must do for these kids. We knew there was a big problem of malnutrition, apart from oral hygiene," said Ashlesha Sheth, a second year student of the college.

They approached students of the dental college and prepared for a day-long camp. While many children underwent minor procedures at the camp, some were asked to come to Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute for major procedures. "We gave them toothbrushes and tooth powder. It was fun teaching kids the right way to brush their teeth. In fact, many adults learnt it too," she says.

Before every camp, the students hold a fund-raising programme in the college. For instance, there was basketball culturals that required every student to pay Rs 100 to participate. "We don’t just collect money but spread the message about Sangam India and our membership swells. So do the contributions," Ashlesha says.

After every visit, meeting or camp, the students note down the proceedings and post pictures on their webpage http://www.sangamindia.org.

On Sunday, the students will be there again. This time they will have with them students and professors from the departments of ophthalmology and ENT. "Our aim is to create a model area. We have held several sessions on hygienic practices. We are planning to work on sanitation facilities in association with the local administration," says Ritin.

Every volunteer knows that when they leave college, there will be a new set of students who would take up the cause. "We will also identify new communities and make new buddies," he says.

pushpa.narayan@timesgroup.com

Here is today's article (Sunday, August 24th, 2008) in the Times of India, on the second page of the Chennai Edition.

You can see the article at the Times of India E-Paper site at http://epaper.timesofindia.com/.

Edit: The link to the Times of India epaper has been corrected. Thanks Siddharth!