The Clinic

I joined a friend yesterday at the clinic where she volunteers and then afterward for lunch.  We lunched at one of Bombay's social and athletic clubs.  This club has been operating for over 100 years and has been beautifully kept.  The clinic was only ten minutes away and serves the mothers and babies living in the surrounding slum.  This dichotomy exists everywhere in this city.

I would love to lay out the details of my visit to her clinic and our conversation afterward.  I was fascinated and enchanted every minute of the day.  The clinic serves pregnant mothers until their children are three years old and exclusively provides preventive care.  When they connect with pregnant mothers, they talk about good nutrition and breastfeeding.  When they meet new moms, they weigh the babies and help with breastfeeding techniques.  As the kids grow, they maintain growth records, watch for malnutrition or vitamin deficiencies, and provide nutrition counseling and any necessary supplements.

The clinic is the small room behind the two doors pictured above.  A few mats cover the floor and some old picture books had been scattered about.  The nurses and doctor each held cloud connected devices with every child's full medical record as they joined the mothers on the floor.  The small room provided more space for the children to stretch and play than their homes, keeping them alert, active, and happy.  The moms seemed relaxed and comfortable, both with the doctor and nurses and with each other.  It felt similar to the playdates I joined when my girls were little, where babies enjoyed seeing new faces, and toddlers and moms enjoyed social interactions.

We saw a two month old baby who weighed under five pounds.  We saw a one month old baby who weighed only slightly more.  I watched my friend teach each of these mothers how to feed their babies in order to help them grow.  She acted as a lactation consultant for one mother and discussed how to properly prepare formula with the other.  Watching these women, I remembered my own fear as I cared for my first baby.  I remembered feeling in over my head and drinking up all of the information provided to me by my pediatrician, my obstetrician, my lactation consultant, and all of the nurses at the hospital.  These women delivered in a simple hospital, saw doctors for a few immunizations, but otherwise receive no preventive care or well-baby checks outside of this free clinic.

As the babies grew bigger, the doctor talked to their mothers about which foods to introduce next and how to serve them.  Just like my well-baby visits in the states, she told them when to begin introducing solid foods and how to prepare them.  As she checked each child's weight, she would listen to their diet and advise which foods to insert and which to take away.  A lot of local mothers feel that babies need runny food and so they water down their cereal, porridge, fruits and vegetables.  Babies fill their bellies with water and don't ingest enough calories to reach a healthy weight.

Over lunch, we discussed how simple her work really is.  Breastfeeding is a skill that must be learned, but which is simple to teach.  No mother has a natural ability to prepare formula and cooking for an infant is significantly different from cooking for an adult.  It is no surprise that mothers do now have this knowledge - I certainly didn't.  Such knowledge is simple to share and leads to dramatic changes.  Her detailed growth charts showed clear results.  Consistently, women bring severely malnourished children to the clinic and within a few months their kids have reached or surpassed statistical expectations for a healthy child.

She has plans to expand her work on a regional or national level and I have no doubt she will.  After our day yesterday, I hope to spend much more time with her.  After hearing her vision and seeing her clear results, I hope to get involved.