But does it really matter whether you save a life with fluids or cardiothoracic surgery?” He says, “People said I was too highly trained for rural India, my skills would be wasted. He would live.ĭr Nandakumar, is a surgeon who returned from New York and ran the Gudalur Adivasi Hospital in the Nilgiris, along with his wife, Dr Shylaja Devi for many decades. I could see him slipping away as we fought through the night. I sat with him through the night, my battle with the lord of death. We had to keep his kidneys perfused to prevent them from shutting down. Oxygen was supplemented as were drugs to keep his blood pressure up. When he arrived at the Gudalur Adivasi Hospital, we put intravenous lines on both arms and pushed fluids and antibiotics. But a few days of severe diarrhoea had knocked him out, sending him into septic shock. He was a strong, young Adivasi with a muscular body. The situation in rural India is much worse. According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), India has just 7 doctors per thousand population while Pakistan has 11 and China has 22. The title of the seminal book ‘Where there is no Doctor’ by David Werner published in 1970, summed up situations where a qualified doctor was not available and anyone could learn from a rudimentary knowledge of medical matters.Ī half-century later, the title also describes a situation where qualified healthcare professionals are missing in large numbers-the rural India.
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