email exerpt
I just wrote this email to a friend answering some very good questions about India, so I thought I should post the text here for all to enjoy:
"how to people in the slums PAY the doctor?"
a doctor visit at a private clinic costs around 150 rupees, which is equivalent to $3 US. For a slum-dweller, this is a day's earnings (or even a day and a half).
If you go to a municipal hospital, your visit is free if you are very poor, but the facilities are usually very old and run-down and the lines are long.
Prescriptions are generally not free, but medicine is very cheap in India, and doctors only prescribe medications which are affordable. When my friend went to the doctor, he paid $3 US for the visit and $3 US for a handful of prescriptions. Doctors wrap up however many pills a patient will need in newspaper or pour an small amount of pepto or cough syrup into a small plastic bottle. You'll see a nice picture of the slum clinic pharmacy on my blog.
Health insurance is virtually unheard of. Only the filthy rich would even consider purchasing health insurance.
Doctors make their money by seeing a large quantity of patients - that is how they can charge so little. If they charged more, no one would come see them and they wouldn't make any money, so they charge very little and see patients quickly and in large quantities.
"are costs lowered because they find volunteers (such as yourself?) that use it as an internship?"
The doctors in the program received a small check from my program fees, but it's not enough to lower clinic costs or anything, it's just a nice little bonus.
"how rampant is unemployment in the slums? Is there surplus labor from poor rural farmers (like shanty towns in Brazil)?"
Unemployment is terrible and labor is very cheap. India is well-known for farmer suicides - 1,000's have killed themselves just this year due to floods destroying their crops. Everyone who can in India has servants for cooking and cleaning because labor is so cheap and people need the work.
"what was THE most interesting thing about the culture you noticed? what was THE most interesting perception Indians had of American culture (besides favoring Pakistani gov't)?"
There's not one most interesting thing, but I think overall the closeness amongst Indians is very nice. As with most of the developing world, the community ties are much stronger and social bonds are more in the forefront of daily living than in the developed world. When you get on a train, as an American, you look for the seat furthest away from everyone else, but when an Indian boards a train, they sit with everyone and leave empty seats all around their cluster. Closeness is very important.
Indians didn't share too much with me about their perception of Americans, but I gathered that they think we're all very rich and they think Western women in general are much freer with sex. The most surprising thing was the differences people don't know about - many weren't aware that the US doesn't have a caste system or arranged marriages or that we have secularity.
"how to people in the slums PAY the doctor?"
a doctor visit at a private clinic costs around 150 rupees, which is equivalent to $3 US. For a slum-dweller, this is a day's earnings (or even a day and a half).
If you go to a municipal hospital, your visit is free if you are very poor, but the facilities are usually very old and run-down and the lines are long.
Prescriptions are generally not free, but medicine is very cheap in India, and doctors only prescribe medications which are affordable. When my friend went to the doctor, he paid $3 US for the visit and $3 US for a handful of prescriptions. Doctors wrap up however many pills a patient will need in newspaper or pour an small amount of pepto or cough syrup into a small plastic bottle. You'll see a nice picture of the slum clinic pharmacy on my blog.
Health insurance is virtually unheard of. Only the filthy rich would even consider purchasing health insurance.
Doctors make their money by seeing a large quantity of patients - that is how they can charge so little. If they charged more, no one would come see them and they wouldn't make any money, so they charge very little and see patients quickly and in large quantities.
"are costs lowered because they find volunteers (such as yourself?) that use it as an internship?"
The doctors in the program received a small check from my program fees, but it's not enough to lower clinic costs or anything, it's just a nice little bonus.
"how rampant is unemployment in the slums? Is there surplus labor from poor rural farmers (like shanty towns in Brazil)?"
Unemployment is terrible and labor is very cheap. India is well-known for farmer suicides - 1,000's have killed themselves just this year due to floods destroying their crops. Everyone who can in India has servants for cooking and cleaning because labor is so cheap and people need the work.
"what was THE most interesting thing about the culture you noticed? what was THE most interesting perception Indians had of American culture (besides favoring Pakistani gov't)?"
There's not one most interesting thing, but I think overall the closeness amongst Indians is very nice. As with most of the developing world, the community ties are much stronger and social bonds are more in the forefront of daily living than in the developed world. When you get on a train, as an American, you look for the seat furthest away from everyone else, but when an Indian boards a train, they sit with everyone and leave empty seats all around their cluster. Closeness is very important.
Indians didn't share too much with me about their perception of Americans, but I gathered that they think we're all very rich and they think Western women in general are much freer with sex. The most surprising thing was the differences people don't know about - many weren't aware that the US doesn't have a caste system or arranged marriages or that we have secularity.
posted by mavis | 10:06 AM
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