Poor but happy: St. Stephen's Outreach Center

Women's empowering project: sewing clothes and purses

Today started out really early at 6:30 a.m. as we spent the day at St. Stephen's Community Center and Clinic in Delhi's biggest slum. The center serves 90,000 of East Delhi's poorest slum dwellers and is run by St. Stephen's Hospital. We met with Dr. John, one of the senior physicians of the center and with several community health residents and post-graduates, including Dr. Robyn, who introduced us to some of the programs the center runs including income earning initiatives which empower young women by giving them sewign lessons in a shop donated by the community. These women make beautiful clothes and purse which they sell throughout Delhi. We of course purchased some goodies and took some video for the Global Health Review and lots of photos, which I still can't post just yet, but hopefully will do so from Jaipur next week.


The center also has a child care center where children, some from abusive homes find refuge, love, and good food at a center that is devoted to furthering their health and wellbeing. It broke my heart to see these beautiful children with bright soulful eyes who weight so much less than their peer in developing countries. It made me think of the childhood obesity epidemic in America and how unjust it is that so few should have so much and so many have so few. The kids were so happy to see us and take photos with us and see the results on our "fancy" digital cameras. It was very endearing.

After a presentation by one of the resident physicians regarding Nutrient Indeficiency in India, which included a discussion session with the head of the department, Dr. Amoun as well as a Professor Emeritus from a university in Delhi (I'm ashamed to say I neither remember his name nor the university), but he's purported to be a public health encyclapedia, so it was fascinating to hear him talk about micronutrient deficiencies, which we've discussed so often in class.

This was made even more real when we attended the center's Nutrition Clinic in the afternoon. Most of the infants and their mothers were incredibly thin and underdeveloped and several women complained of their children having Pyca, which according to Sejal, our resident Hindi translater, rickshaw price negotiater and nurse, is a deficiency of minerals that causes kids to eat dirt to replace the minerals. This is something we covered in our Environmental Health class, and today it was made real and had a human face.

Actually, so far our exposure has trully been phonomenal public health in practice, because it brings everything we've learned in acedemia to life in a very real way, including development, poverty, malnutrition, sanitation, HIV and other infectious disese and so much more.
Once more, I count my blessings to be where I am in life, for my loved ones, and for everything I have.

Namaste from Delhi.