Finally, we got to do what we came here for. It’s been a hectic day; 35 of us working on the inoculation programme in a place outside Delhi called Madiphur. We were expecting it to be quite poor, but I don’t think some of us expected it to be quite that poor.
It was described as a village; but it was town-sized by our reckoning. We drove out on a coach, met up with the local team consisting of Rotarians and health staff, split up into groups of 4 and went off to our locations.
Angela and I went off to what was, in effect, the local community centre. It was very decent, here, and the health care volunteers kept everything totally under control. The kids coming to be inoculated were all under 5; they were brought by parents, but most often by older siblings. The first thing we needed to learn was “Open your mouth, one, two, well done!” in Hindi. The children were incredibly well-behaved, especially when they realised that we’d got some little treats for them. The vaccine is dispensed orally, two drops into the child’s mouth. We took turns at doing this; I’ll try to get some pictures up.
Other teams weren’t half as lucky as us. Our part of town was pretty manky, but others found themselves literally working on street corners next to open sewers. The one thing we all noticed, however, was how welcoming everyone in Madiphur was. Nothing but smiles everywhere we went. I think we’ve become far too cynical, and assume that everyone wants something from you. It just isn’t true in India.
In our three-hour shift we got through 292 children. Honestly, we had it easy. One team (admittedly, larger than ours) inoculated 897 kids. Altogether, today we managed just under 10 thousand between us, but we’re expecting more that this tomorrow when we return to Madiphur to do a door-to-door sweep to get the ones that we’ve missed.
We’ll try to remember not to wear open-toed sandals next time!
It was described as a village; but it was town-sized by our reckoning. We drove out on a coach, met up with the local team consisting of Rotarians and health staff, split up into groups of 4 and went off to our locations.
Angela and I went off to what was, in effect, the local community centre. It was very decent, here, and the health care volunteers kept everything totally under control. The kids coming to be inoculated were all under 5; they were brought by parents, but most often by older siblings. The first thing we needed to learn was “Open your mouth, one, two, well done!” in Hindi. The children were incredibly well-behaved, especially when they realised that we’d got some little treats for them. The vaccine is dispensed orally, two drops into the child’s mouth. We took turns at doing this; I’ll try to get some pictures up.
Other teams weren’t half as lucky as us. Our part of town was pretty manky, but others found themselves literally working on street corners next to open sewers. The one thing we all noticed, however, was how welcoming everyone in Madiphur was. Nothing but smiles everywhere we went. I think we’ve become far too cynical, and assume that everyone wants something from you. It just isn’t true in India.
In our three-hour shift we got through 292 children. Honestly, we had it easy. One team (admittedly, larger than ours) inoculated 897 kids. Altogether, today we managed just under 10 thousand between us, but we’re expecting more that this tomorrow when we return to Madiphur to do a door-to-door sweep to get the ones that we’ve missed.
We’ll try to remember not to wear open-toed sandals next time!
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