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Dental Elective in Ludhiana

Sometimes it is difficult for you to understand why we need your help so badly for our Good Samaritan Fund to support poor patients at CMC Ludhiana.  Josie has just made her first visit to India and spent a few weeks as a dental elective student at CMC Ludhiana.  What she saw truly amazed her.  Read what she said:

This placement has challenged my thinking immensely.  Now I understand just how privileged we are as a nation to receive free health care.  Take for instance the patient who presented with a history of head on bicycle collision with a truck.  His radiographs indicated multiple fractures of the jaw.  This man cannot afford to pay the 1000 rupees (£12.65) fee for a general anaesthetic, let alone the surgery for these injuries too, and will result in him consenting to ‘do nothing’.  The fractures are well aligned, says the specialist, and so there is a hope for spontaneous healing, lest the fracture sites become internally infected… and then what? Can we just stand by and leave him?

I’m afraid of the answer, and will pray for his recovery.

And then there is the lady who desperately went to see a back alley QUACK for a 5 rupee (six pence) extraction of her upper right second molar.

Two days later she presents to the OMFS department with a spreading dental infection occupying all spaces in the right hand side of her face, extending down her neck, soon to be involving her cavernous sinus.  Swollen to the extent she could not move her jaw, and already showing signs of hypotension and pyrexia, in the NHS she would be classified as a high priority emergency and rushed immediately to A&E for imminent treatment, at any cost.

Yet, once again, she cannot afford a general anaesthetic to receive the most effective treatment she needs, and will have her infection drained under local anaesthetic.  I cannot comprehend the agony of this, and with a heavy heart watched her be driven away between her son and daughter on a moped… maybe she will receive some treatment tomorrow?  I do pray so.

If you would like more information about Josie’s time in India you may read it here https://jakane93.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/first-blog-post/

 

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