Penn Nursing India: August 28th and 29th: IKP Center for Technologies in Public Health (ICTPH)

Sarah, Andrea, Rachael and Alison in the lobby of our new hotel

On Monday morning, we all woke up bright and early at 6 am on the train to start our first day at IKP Center for Technologies in Public Health (ICTPH). We were able to easily find our driver once we arrived at the Thanjavur train station and made our way over to our new hotel. The hotel is comfortable with very kind and helpful staff. A few of us were finally able to turn our clothes over to be washed, which we have needed to do for a few days now. After settling in, we were off to meet Dr. Zeena Johar at the ICTPH headquarters. Upon arriving at ICTPH, Dr. Johar took us out to a wonderful breakfast at an authentic Indian restaurant. The menu was in Tamil and Zeena had to translate for us to tell us what was available. After breakfast we walked back to ICTPH with Dr. Johar and sat in on a meeting with different members of the staff and learned the details of how ICTPH is involved in the community healthcare of 3 nearby clinics. We were lucky enough to be observing in Thanjavur at the same time as Dr. Nachiket Mor, who is a member of the Board of Directors at ICTPH.

An example of the household ID cards used
to identify patients and track their visits through
computerized documentation at the ICTPH clinics

ICTPH has three community clinics and plans to continue expanding. There are 200,000 people in a targeted area that do not have nearby access to a primary health clinic (PHC) which is the institution for government care. In this way, ICTPH is setting up an alternative (for some, the only) option for healthcare. Each clinic has a physician, a health extension worker (HEW) and community guides and services approximately 1,500- 2,000 community members.
There were several topics presented throughout Monday and Tuesday to help design protocols and other systematic aspects of the organization. The protocols are followed by the ICTPH physicians who have a bachelor's degree in medicine or another health science field with additional training provided by ICTPH. Currently the training is about three months, but they hope to expand that to one year in the future. The topics included women's health, cardiovascular disease, nutrition and micronutrient supplementation, defining the roles of the different medical care workers, design and placement of new clinics including the furniture, computerized documentation (they are designing an entire new system for use in the clinics). The discussion was intellectually stimulating. Issues are thoroughly discussed and debated with everyone sharing their opinion, experience, and knowledge. The staff frequently cites relevant literature and identifies areas where more information is needed. We contributed to a few of the topics discussed, sharing our experiences with electronic medical records, women's health, and other areas of health care. The staff is impressive - they are passionate about the mission of the organization, intelligent, and experienced (even the many young staff members).

Our waiter beginning to make our paan

We concluded the day by getting together with the members of ICTPH for dinner and tasted a variety of delicious food including both north and south Indian and Chinese cuisines. We continued an informal discussion of community health and learned more about India in general. Some of us had never used finger bowls and were introduced to the idea - warm water with a lemon slice used after a meal to clean the fingers and emulsify grease. We also tried paan - an extremely sweet after dinner digestive which is made by wrapping betel nuts, rose water and other seeds and spices in an areca leaf. Some of us enjoyed this as a one time experience, while others (mainly Alison) said they wouldn't mind making this a part of their daily after dinner ritual. This was a great opportunity to get to know the ICTPH staff on a more personal level. We had a wonderful time!