Saturday we loaded into the van
and drove about 3 hours away to the City of Pondicherry. Pondicherry, or Puducherry in the local
language of Tamil, was a French colony on the Indian Ocean. The city still has a lot of French architecture
and culture. We visited
Gratitude Heritage Home there, which works to restore and preserve some of these old buildings. I encourage anyone reading this to visit
the website just to see some pictures.
We
also visited the
Aravind Eye Hospital, one of 5 centers in India founded by Dr.
G. Venkataswamy to eliminate unnecessary blindness. This hospital has won the
Gates Award forGlobal Health earning the title of the most productive eye care facility in the
world. I really enjoyed learning about
this hospital. They have figured out how
to provide high quality care to a very large population with their surgeons
performing about 2000 cataract surgeries per year (the national average is
200). By offering more expensive options
to their private paying patient the system generates an income that it uses to
provide free care and surgeries to those who could otherwise not afford
it. I was very excited to see this
system in place because it was an idea I had explored for one of my projects
last semester. If I have time later I
may dedicate another whole post to this hospital and everything I learned
there.
We spent the night in Pondicherry
and the next day we went to a few tourist places including a place called
Auroville. Auroville is a township where
people from all over the world come to live and engage I community living with
the purpose to “realize human unity.” I
cannot do Auroville or the philosophy behind it justice here but it was a neat
place to visit and there is a lot of information about this online if anyone
wants to learn more about it.
After Auroville we made a few
more stops and then returned to Chennai to begin another week.
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| Aravind Campus in Pondicherry |
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| Inside Aravind |
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| Architecture in Pondicherry |
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Architecture in Pondicherry
|
|
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| At Auroville |
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| A Stop at a Salt Mine |
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| Prof. Raj Teaching About Salt in India |
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| Stopped for A Coconut on the Highway |
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| Tourist Stop on the Way Home |
Helen grew up in Ames, Iowa. She graduated from Syracuse University in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Child and Family Studies and worked as a Lead Teacher at an early childhood education center following graduation. She is a third year dual Medical Doctorate (MD) and Master of Public Health (MPH) student. During her year of MPH training, Helen is working as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Master of Public Health Program. Helen is enjoying learning about all areas of public health and is particularly interested in the fields of pediatrics, maternal and child health and health policy. She serves as Co-President of the Pediatrics Interest Group and as a VP for the American Medical Association-Iowa Medical Society Student Organization at the Carver College of Medicine. She has recently begun volunteering for the Mobile Clinic. Helen enjoys cooking, spin classes, listening to public radio and traveling to visit family and friends around the country. 
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