A visit to Kanti Hospital children’s burns unit

Last night an absolutely wild storm struck up and basically it is 24 hours later and it hasn’t let up. My friend Srijana texted and blamed both climate change and India equally for such an unusual fall storm.  Flights were cancelled and the roads were literally awash with dirty rainwater at points deep enough for a good soaker.

As such, I stuck close to the guesthouse and the stupa today in order to catch up on entering some field notes and do a bit of reading.  Since my grandmother is positive I am only doing touristy things here, I will take a moment to assure you, fine reader, that the process of my research is really fits and starts, and when it really is happening full force it will probably be too boring to write about on my blog anyway.

That being said I have the next two days organized for field visits to farmers involved in the training that Shenpen (my contact Anamika’s organization) funds and monitors.  She is quite confident I can get a number of interviews done so I am nervous, excited, and not holding my breath since things like weather and so forth can really get in the way of planning!

Today Anamika invited me to join her in gift delivery to the Kanti (children’s) Hospital burn unit.  I didn’t hesitate to say yes since I generally feel comfortable in the hospital environment thanks to my mom and also we were delivering toys to kids who are in a pretty tough situation.   Anamika’s organization Shenpen has various funders and is the umbrella organization for other smaller groups who work on a fairly modest budget to: deliver care packages to children in the burns unit, support elderly women in a retirement living home, support street kids in the Boudhna area with breakfast and clothing, support street dogs in the Boudhna area for emergencies and vaccinations/neutering, and lastly support rural skills building, in this case farmer training. 

Anamika is a fireball.  I could tell via email before I got here that she is totally engaged in her work, but seeing her in action was very impressive (today started with an unusual argument with a cabbie who was trying to rip us off.  I feel like she won too.).  She has been visiting the hospital for the two years she has been with Shenpen and still finds it difficult to witness the deep suffering of the children.  That being said, Shenpen provides volunteers who do engaging activities and keep a playroom fully stocked with books and toys for the child patients, who can be there for months at a time recovering. 

Today there were eight children there, the youngest being 9 months the oldest being around 5 years, all were female.  The hospital itself was largish and felt institutional and aging.  The hallways had some interesting smells but the burns unit mostly smelled sterile, despite the walls being a bit moldy and the beds being quite apparently old. 

In my short visit it appeared the children were receiving good care, their bandages looked proper and clean, there were several nurses on hand and the mothers were all in the beds with their kids passing time or breastfeeding.  A couple of kids were quite shy but we did manage to get a giggle or a smile and even a ‘thank you’ in English from one mother.  Two of the children had their faces bandaged quite thoroughly.  One child was missing most of her hand. One child was about 80% wrapped in bandages in the more acute care room.  Anamika went bed by bed asking about the age of the child and what had happened to cause the burns.  The stories were mostly the same, a pot of something was boiling and the child ran into it.  One toddler was home alone with the cooking oil and it fell on her.

Anamika feels very strongly that this hospital is literally a lifesaver for many disadvantaged families.  The hospital covers costs for the care and provides probably the best medical service in the country due to the interns they have visiting from other countries as well as the high quality resident doctors.  Her organization is working to provide a little bit of reprieve from the daily suffering of these children through handmade dolls from grannies in England, toys and toothbrushes.  She says toys often go missing from the toy room as patients often have none of their own and opt to take one with them when they are discharged.

I didn’t take any photos as it felt inappropriate of me to do so, but if you’re interested you can see some of Shenpen’s work and maybe one of the patients from our visit here:  https://www.facebook.com/rangjungyesheshenpen