The document describes the author's traumatic experience in a rural health clinic in Bangladesh or India while working as an Indicorps Fellow. The clinic was overcrowded, unsanitary, and lacked proper medical care. The woman next to the author died due to lack of adequate care. This experience showed the author how disparities in health are related to location, as the clinic was far from doctors in Kolkata. The author pursued degrees in urban planning and public health to address preventable illnesses in rural villages caused by weak infrastructure and lack of healthcare. The experience motivated the author to improve links between urban and rural areas and access to resources like water and sanitation.
The document describes the author's traumatic experience in a rural health clinic in Bangladesh or India while working as an Indicorps Fellow. The clinic was overcrowded, unsanitary, and lacked proper medical care. The woman next to the author died due to lack of adequate care. This experience showed the author how disparities in health are related to location, as the clinic was far from doctors in Kolkata. The author pursued degrees in urban planning and public health to address preventable illnesses in rural villages caused by weak infrastructure and lack of healthcare. The experience motivated the author to improve links between urban and rural areas and access to resources like water and sanitation.
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The document describes the author's traumatic experience in a rural health clinic in Bangladesh or India while working as an Indicorps Fellow. The clinic was overcrowded, unsanitary, and lacked proper medical care. The woman next to the author died due to lack of adequate care. This experience showed the author how disparities in health are related to location, as the clinic was far from doctors in Kolkata. The author pursued degrees in urban planning and public health to address preventable illnesses in rural villages caused by weak infrastructure and lack of healthcare. The experience motivated the author to improve links between urban and rural areas and access to resources like water and sanitation.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
I am pulled into the rural health clinic and my half-unconscious
state is knocked out of me by the stench of vomit, human waste, urine,
and rotting flesh. The villagers hold me up as I vomit again, but, like the past four hours, there is nothing left for me to throw up, the result of drinking unboiled village water, dehydration and heat exhaustion. I remember that this hospital doesn’t have a regular doctor. I’m dragged into a room, overflowing with women: some bleeding profusely, some giving birth, others screaming in pain. After being pushed onto a dirty bed next to a moaning woman, hours of unknown injections and waves in and out of consciousness, I’m told by who I think is a nurse that I am well enough to leave, despite the fact that I don’t feel well enough to stand. As I am helped out of the clinic I look back and realize the woman next to me is dead. It was not until this experience, something that took place when I was an Indicorps Fellow stationed in a village on the border of Bangladesh and India, that I truly understood how disparities in health are space related. My own traumatic experience in a health clinic, the death of the woman next to me and countless other women in that clinic, could have been prevented. These events happened because the clinic was four hours away from Kolkata, where most of the areas doctors were located. Pursuing a Masters of Urban Planning and a Masters of Public Health is directly related to these experiences. That year, it became all too clear to me that good health is essential to the livelihood of a village, a region and nation. However, I watched villagers suffer from preventable diseases and illnesses, rampant from weak infrastructure and absent health practitioners. I observed the concentration of doctors and nurses in Kolkata, where the pull of amenities like running water and electricity was too strong, preventing them from rural work. In India, I discovered my desire to roll up my sleeves and improve urban centers actively working on how to improve its links with the rural areas. At NYU’s Urban Planning program, I delved into these links, placing them contextually in the international urban development program, focusing on how space shaped development. While there, I was contracted by the InterAmerican Development Bank to analyze ways in which access to water shaped opportunities of urban and rural citizens. Soon after, I worked with the Clinton Foundation to explore ways urban wastewater could be managed/treated, developing a strategy that will be piloted in the Foundation’s “C40” cities. At Columbia’s School of Public Health, I have begun to understand the nuances of health behavior, and how that can be used towards effective health education. Concurrently, I’ve completed an internship at UN-Habitat, where I gained a solid grasp of the UN system and its work around the world. I hope to continue that understanding with the KCCI internship this summer.
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