Jibhi Chai Clinic

My last rotation was in a remote village in the Himalayas called Jibhi! I was very excited to escape busy, smelly Manali for a week.

Jibhi Chai Clinic is a health clinic about 4 hours away from Lady Willingdon Hospital in Manali. It is located in a utopia, on a clean stream in the Himalayas next to a butterfly infested rainforest with a waterfall. Even the beds felt like clouds. Rinya, a social worker, lives there and manages the health workers in the region. Charlie, a small yellow lab puppy lives there too!

During our stay we attended the Health Mela (health fair) with the staff. A health mela is held once a year for each council of remote villages. The idea of the Mela is to bring the education and clinic to the remote villages for school aged children. They generate awareness through the street play called a kalajata promoting healthy eating and nutrition. The most prevalent medical issues referred and treated were malnutrition, typhoid, UTIs, scabies, pica, anemia, and infected wounds. One of the days we hiked up the mountain with supplies, a doctor, a dental hygienist, social workers, and medicines for over an hour until we reached the village. We saw around 115-160 children each day. We were allowed to take pulses and pictures for the staff. We were exhausted, but we felt it was important to bring the medical care to the villagers who typically cannot make it to the doctor safely.

Rinya discussed with me the importance of reaching out to the remote villages that cannot access medical care or health education. She also emphasized that both health education and clinical medicine are equally as important to the people of these remote villages. One without the other does not sustain the community health. Clinical medicine treats the immediate problem/pain but does not prevent the problem from reoccurring. Basic health education (nutrition, hygiene) teaches but does not treat the immediate problem or relieve from pain. Both clinical medicine and health education are crucial to improving the health of these communities of Northern India.

This topic really sparked my interest in possibly doing a joint degree in a Masters in Public Health and Physician’s Assistant. A MPH would help me to understand how health care works on the large scale. Being a Physician’s Assistant, I would be able to treat patients and work clinically. Both of these degrees would work well together and broaden my perspective on health. I also decided to do my research project for this trip on the Health Mela and its social/medical benefits for these remote villages.

Another reason I really enjoyed Jibhi was because we were able to work with people from India our own age. One of the doctors was young, and the two social worker interns were our age. We had a small cultural exchange with them, we taught them to swim and they taught us to Bollywood dance! We had such a wonderful time together. We also went swimming in the waterfall!

Not having internet for the week was refreshing. It was good to just get away from everyone and everything and focus on where I was at that moment.