Kolkata and Purulia

WARNING: this blog post contains lots of medical geekiness at the start but gets lighter towards the end!

After chilling out for the last 3 months, I was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms from work so started a month long placement in ophthalmology in Rotary Clubs in West Bengal kindly organised by Gipi Masi. The first 2 weeks were based in Rotary Narayana Nethralaya Hospital (which was fun to try and say to the tuk tuk driver for 2 weeks!). This hospital was fairly modern with mostly well off patients who could pay for their treatment with health insurance. However they did also treat a certain number of poorer community patients for free as well. The clinics and surgeries were run almost the same as they would be in England with a few minor differences such as optometrists having more responsibility than they would at home, and patients being given a ridiculously strong antibiotic first line (apparently the one we use isn't as widely available in India so at least this way they would be treated with something!)! More interesting to learn about was the training and hierarchy in the system here. It takes 3 years to complete ophthalmology training (7 years at home) and the trainees can only operate on the non-paying community patients. The consultants (and me!) are called Sir/Madam and the trainees have to stand whenever they enter the room. 

We broke up those 2 weeks by a trip to the Sundarbon for 3 days. After 6 hours of travelling by taxi/bus/2 ferries/cycle rikshaw, we finally arrived at our 'Eco-village' which was essentially mud huts with a light and fan! We enjoyed getting muddy in our first visit to the mangroves later that day. It was great fun wading through the mud - until a crab climbed up my leg and I screamed the place down! After that I just wanted to get out of there sharpish! 

We spent the next day on a large boat sailing through the jungle in the hopes of spotting the famous Royal Bengal Tiger. Alas there was no tiger to be seen (thanks to the noisy local tourists with us!) but we did manage to see a few crocodiles, deer and a monitor lizard. That evening we enjoyed a nice moonlit boat ride with some beer and snacks.

The 2nd 2 weeks were spent in Purulia, a small town 5 hours outside of Kolkata. Our first impression on arrival was 'where the hell are we?!' which was then not helped by us dropped off at a disgusting hotel to stay at for the next 2 weeks. After 3 months of being on the road, our expectations are not that high these days, but even Andy wasn't willing to stay in that place! We immediately went in search of another hotel and found a much nicer one (relatively speaking!). However, after 2 nights there, the hospital advised us to move again to another hotel that was within walking distance so that I could go back and forth for my lunch! Thankfully that hotel wasn't bad either so we survived chez Hotel Akash Ganga. We were even invited to tea with the hotel owner who rang his children abroad so that they could speak to the foreigners!

There wasn't a huge amount to do in Purulia so I made the most of the hospital experience. This was very different to Kolkata in that all of the patients were poor and the majority of patients had been hand selected from rural villages to have their cataracts removed for free or a nominal charge. As these patients clearly couldn't afford to see a doctor until they absolutely had to, the cataracts and infections that I saw were the worst I have ever come across. You could definitely tell how much of a difference these operations were making to their lives. The operations were organised very efficiently as well as only taking 5-10 minutes, which meant that a surgeon could get through 10-12 patients in a morning surgery session (compared to 4-5 in England!). The concept of confidentiality and privacy was considered a luxury rather than a necessity here so 2 patients would be operated on at the same time in the same room (by 2 different surgeons!) whilst 2 others would be getting prepped. 

My birthday was a pretty quiet affair in Purulia as there wasn't really anywhere to go and we tried to be back at the hotel before it got dark at 5! However to make up for it, we booked ourselves in a swanky 5* hotel in Kolkata for our last weekend in India! We'd forgotten what such luxury felt like eg clean sheets, soft mattresses and something other than jam toast for breakfast! 

We were treated to lunch by our contact in Kolkata at the Bengal Club, an exclusive and famous club from the time of the Raj. It was very grand inside and the food was fantastic!

We only had time for a bit of sightseeing around Kolkata itself. Some parts were really nice with crumbling colonial buildings but they tended to be surrounded by street stalls and slums! On the whole, we've enjoyed our 2 months in India but we're very much looking forward to going to Australia now!!