Six Yeshiva U. students traveled to India this past summer to witness firsthand the effects of globalization on health care as part of one of YU’s summer courses abroad, spending time in Mumbai and the Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR) in Jaipur, India.
The students were first introduced to the medical aspects of global healthcare during two weeks of classes at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. They then departed to Mumbai for a week and a half. Dr. Sonia Suchday, co-director for the Institute for Public Health at Einstein, organized all lectures and planned the entire mission.
The course requirements for the first part of the mission, both at Einstein and at IIHMR, included attendance at all lectures and debriefings as well as two research papers, the completion of which earned participants three credits in biology. Dr. Suchday put together a group of dynamic faculty members from different specialties to teach the students the breadth and depth of global health issues. The lecture series was open to undergraduate and graduate students and was designed to prepare them for what they would encounter in India.
The second part of the trip began in Mumbai where the group took a general tour with a Jewish-Indian guide named Yael and saw several historical landmarks including the Gateway of India, the Sassoon School, and the Sassoon Synagogue.
The mission spent two Shabbatot in Chabad Mumbai and visited the old Chabad Narriman House, which was attacked in the famous November 2008 assault by Pakistani Islamic terrorists. Two shlichim (messengers) from Chabad took the members of the mission on a tour inside the old Chabad House where the students saw for themselves the destruction that had captured headlines across the world.
“India is one of the few countries that hasn’t persecuted Jews within its shores,” commented Dr. Suchday. “The fact is that within India, the destroyed Chabad House was universally mourned,” she said, adding that the Hindi people showed their remorse and condemnation of the attack by circling the thousands of bullet holes in red.
After the first weekend in Mumbai the group took an hour-long plane ride to Jaipur, located in Rhajastan – one of the seven states that comprise modern India. The mission made their way to IIHMR to participate in lectures along with Indian students interested in medicine, psychology, and hospital management.
At IIHMR the group learned about different recent epidemics in India. AIDS is a major healthcare setback, but is making strides. “At the end of 2011, drugs used to cope with AIDS will be free [of cost],” promised P.R. Sodani, dean of IIHMR. “Now it’s twenty dollars a month.”
Diabetes is considered a prevalent epidemic in India as well. According to Dr. Judith Wylie Rosette, professor of epidemiology and population health at Einstein, “India is the new diabetes capital of the world.”
Research in health care shows the poor reality of the public health sector. “In India, health insurance is relatively rare when compared to most developed countries; only ten percent of the population has private coverage,” declared Dr. Komal Bajaj, a faculty member at Einstein. “This increases to approximately fifty percent when surveying upper-middle class Indians. As a result, the majority of a patient’s expenditure is still out-of-pocket.”
The group visited a community hospital with communal wards for male and female patients and no air conditioning. Doctors see between 200 to 300 patients a day and make diagnoses by methods that are not conventional Western techniques. In contrast, the private hospital the group visited in Mumbai five days later was immaculate with sterilized rooms, marble floors and air conditioning.
A health care professional in the private hospital pointed out a sign that delineated the illegality of gender selection – aborting a child based on its sex. The Indian government tries to prevent this by blacking out the gender of the baby on the amniocentesis test results. Another gender selection issue arises with vaccinations. A male child is often vaccinated before a female child when there are limited resources because of the widespread preference for males in the Indian culture. Therefore, the Indian government takes necessary precautions to ensure the equality and fair treatment of women and children.
The educators at Einstein demonstrated how the disciplines of science and psychology are both vital to the medical field. Having the appropriate decorum and understanding the culture is not just respectful, but a necessity to function properly in any profession. As Dr. Suchday constantly emphasized, “There needs to be awareness that the world is not as big as we think.”