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Published: January 23rd 2007
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My Experience with the Sick in Chennai
The following is just an overview of everything regarding the hospital I work at and the health-related shit I've seen.
Welcome to Gremaltes Gremaltes Hospital is a non-profit hospital created and funded by a German NGO committed to the elimination of leprosy (also known as Hanson's disease). The hospital was built in the 70s and was devoted entirely to leprosy treatment until the mid-90s when it was decided that leprosy, though still evident in India, existed to a much smaller extent than before and thus required less of the hospital's attention. Thus, as there were fewer Leprosy patients to treat, the hospital expanded its operations to include opthamology, dermatology, and ENT care. There are still approx. 40 leprosy inpatients residing at the hospital, and still a steady flow of leprosy outpatients coming through all the time.
I've only been here for a couple weeks now, but I have seen a great deal of leprosy and all its different clinical manifestations. I didn't know shit about the disease when I came here, and now I know more about leprosy than I ever wanted to know.
An Introduction to Leprosy Leprosy is a bacterial infection that attacks most notably the peripheral nerves of the body. The nerve damage results in the degredation of both motor and sensory nerves. The most prevelent symptom is the appearance of large, un-pigmented spots around the body, usually with a loss of sensation. As the disease advances, there is complete loss of sensations in the hands and feet, as well as loss of motor control. The hands curl and become "claw"-like, and the feet usually become ulcerated from untreated trauma. If untreated, the hands and feet are eventually reduced to mere stumps. There are many other complications that include skin and facial disfiguration and blindness.
I've seen all this here at Gremaltes, some are more chilling than others. Certainly nothing I could have seen in America.
The hospital, considering its limited resources, does a pretty thorough job aiding all the leprosy patients that come to the hospital - and all of the treatment is free of charge. Many outpatients come every thursday to have their ulcers cleaned and bandages replaced.
Beyond the Hospital My first full day working at Gremaltes I went with the hospital Director as he toured other health
facilities in Chennai. First place we went to was the Pope John Garden, a rehabilitation center for aged leprosy patients. The compound is run by the Roman Catholic Church. It has a capacity for four hundred residents, but at the moment the only have one hundred (again, there are simply less leprosy patients). There are four residents nuns that organize everything.
The rehabilitation center is a remarkable place. They are almost fully self-sufficient. They care for their own pigs, weave their own bandages, apply their own dressings (without a nurse), draw water from their own wells, cook their own food, and pick their own fruits (selling off the rest for some extra revenue). Hell, they even have their own concrete-brick making machine. Besides their own operations, the residents engage in numerous arts & crafts style production activities, generating candles, mats, carpentry products, etc. These activities keep the residents busy and, when sold, provide some revenue to offset the costs. The facility gives the leprosy patients a purpose in life, and for that I admire them. They now act as productive labor where otherwise (in normal society) they would have been relegated to the fringe; probably to a life of
begging.
After the leprosy center, we went to Jeevodaya, a Catholic hospice specifically for terminal cancer patients. The first thing you notice about the place is how friggin' clean everything is. 'Dying with dignity' they say. At no charge, the nuns here adminster gentle care for those on their way out. The place is not only very clean but obviously well-funded - the first thing we did once inside was watch a video from a Dell laptop, a projector screen, and surround sound speakers - an extremely expensive set of equipment. The video itself seemed less of an overview of the hospital and more a public service movie for an anti-smoking campaign. After having watched Thank You For Smoking, I take such blatent slants against tobacco with a grain of salt, but I will admit, it has led to a pretty hefty cost to society. Sure, obesity is the leading preventable cause of death in America (not tobacco), but look at
how people die of heart disease - heart attacks are vicious but they are quick and clean. It has been proven that unabated tobacco use leads to cancer - a much longer, more drawn-out demise. Many of the patients in Jeevodaya are there because of tobacco-related cancers, and the facility drops a shit-load of resources that could just as well have been used elsewhere to serve some non-preventable grief. Whatever. Anyways, of the 30 or so patients there, on average, on dies a day.
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