Better Health For All

By Andy Beckingham, ex-DPH and public health consultant now living and working in India

Indian back street

I spent much of 2010 in South India on sabbatical with Indian Institute of Public Health. Would my UK experience be useful? Or irrelevant in India? I made new friends and networks, loved the food, the heat and the work. I was incredibly lucky to find a great boss. Found myself helping identify the ‘burdens of disease’ for one state (pop c80 million) and working with the Indian government to focus primary care and work on social determinants, to address health needs – and often failing too. I worked on maternal mortality and discovered how hard it is to change things when social determinants are complex and women undervalued. My boss and I were asked by the government to assess the impact of climate change on the country’s health, and our contribution went into Climate Change and India: a 4×4 Assessment. It helped that I’d been a DPH in England, but getting this kind of work experience was mostly just luck. I returned briefly to a snowy UK, its NHS workforce shell-shocked to find their skills on the Government’s scrapheap. Hmmm – back to India…

2011 – I woke as the dawn appeared as a thin orange line over the Arabian Sea and the plane flew in over the Western Ghats. In 2010 I had met the CEO of a maternity hospital who’d asked if I’d like to set up midwifery training. Are you kidding?? Yes!! So In 2011 I find myself working in a hospital seriously dedicated to improving clinical quality. And in a world of private health care, nevertheless providing free health care for the poorest women. Our Consultant Obstetricians work 7am-9pm and sleep in the hospital when on call, to be quickly available when women have difficulties. A small village hospital 100 km away and run by nuns needed doctors, so our CEO is lending them two registrars for free and I’m helping them plan cervical screening and incontinence counselling to complement their obs & gynae sessions. Public health work here is like…  SO interesting, Dude…  I’ve made links with an NGO in the city’s biggest slum (estimated population… a million? We have no demographic nor epidemiological data) with no primary health maternity care there. Pregnant women walk 3km in 90ᵒF to the nearest private hospital. We plan to provide a free doctor. They’ll have their work cut out…

The maternity hospital I work for managed 5,000 births last year, 65% of them ‘high risk’. We’re developing a programme to train nurses to become professional midwives who will manage the normal births and free the obstetricians up to do the risky ones. India doesn’t really have midwives, so we will pilot their training and work, and evaluate whether they contribute to better maternal outcomes. So in 2011 I find myself writing the curriculum, setting up the training, plus a midwifery exchange programme with South Africa, London and Toronto. Almost every week another really interesting health issue arises. I love it here… want to come too?

PS: Spot the health inequality issues in the photo to win free biryani, bangles and a public health internship.

PPS: No salary available, find your own plane fare.