First day of Focused Medical

Map pins of student locations

Student showing where is lives on the map

Monday started the focused medical training for the Barefoot Doctors Training 2015. The students have been here now for 3 weeks and have a great foundation laid for the intense medical portion of the course.  We started with introductions and had everyone pair up to introduce each other.  Everyone was to tell something of significance that happened over the last year. Along with this we had all the students and instructors place pins in a map showing where they live. This is a very fun and interesting activity that everyone enjoys. The students are spread across the country of Burma and represent many different tribal groups.

Ram Bo Kim

Ram Bo Kin had a fascinating but concerning report.  He lives near a town called Myintkyina. He was very busy this last year treating refugees that are in his area. There are 69 families that have been displaced from their homes due to fighting. He has treated 69 families spread out in his area. This could be between 300 – 500 people. The main issue he treated was the rampant diarrhea problem that was spreading quickly. He decided not to just treat the symptoms but to educate the refugees on hygiene and how to prevent the spread of diarrhea. By addressing the issue in this way he helped the entire affected population and very likely saved some lives. He would run himself ragged if he tried to treat the symptoms of 500 people living in a primitive environment and who undoubtedly continued to spread the infection and become infected again and again. This is a perfect example of what we are trying to teach the students. He did a great job! Another surprising detail was that this refugee camp is deep inside Burma and was totally unknown to most of us. Usually refugee camps are in neighboring countries.  

We also discussed the growing drug problem in the Shan state of Burma. Several of the students live in this state and we asked them to confirm some of the reports we had heard that up to 80% of the youth in this state have an increasing drug problem with Heroin. To our shock they confirmed this was the case. This is a mostly Christian area and fortunately the local churches are stepping up to try and address the problem. This is a complex issue, but many people there are being targeted and the drug problem is being forced on their area by outsiders. I expect this issue will come up later in the course and we will report more in depth at that time.

Getting new books

The students were issued there 2^nd textbook, the Burmese Border Guidelines. This is a much more technical and difficult book to read than their first textbook, but it includes more in-depth medical information.

The last thing we covered was defining our clear expectations for the course. The students also listed out what they expect to get out of the course.  Here is a list of some of the expectations we have of the students.

1.     Summarize the patient log books

2.     Students present reports on assigned chapters.

3.     Case presentations

4.     Explain pictures of patients

5.     Report on health official contacts that they were supposed to initiate since last class.

6.     Report on forming a health committee in their areas.

7.     Be able to send an email and look up a disease on the Internet.

Writing out objectives of the course