M.N.A Hazim Shafii's Portfolio
Volunteering at Sri Krishna Balaniketan Orphanage
Sri Krishna Balaniketan Orphanage is located in Udupi, Karnataka, approximately six to eight hour journey by bus from Bangalore. Every few months, Volunteer Services Organisation (VSO) would organise a Medical and Dental Camp at the orphanage for the locals in Udupi. The initiative saw the involvement of general medical practitioners, dentists and medical specialists like dermatologist, pediatrician and cardiologist to provide free medical consultation and medicines. There were also a handful of medical students of various universities from Manipal, Mangalore and Bangalore and other volunteers from different courses and parts of the world.
I was tasked to assist a dermatologist from Nepal, Dr. Sapna in registering and taking medical history of the patients before they could meet her. It was not an easy task at first as most locals were unable to speak or understand English. In Udupi, most locals either speak Kannada or Hindi language. So naturally there were lots of funny hand gestures and facial expressions in my conversations with the patients. However, Dr. Sapna and the children in the orphanage were kind enough to teach me some simple sentences like Hello (Namaskara) or what is your name (Nimma Hesaru Yenu). But most of the time, I will be accompanied by a couple of children from the orphanage that act as my translator.
Dr Sapna also taught me some of the symptoms that I should look out for while taking medical history and complaints of the patients in relation to skin problems. For example, one of the common practices that I should carry out was to examine the patient's fingers and hands for rashes, red spots or any abnormal discoloration of the skin that could be due to fungal infections. Fungal infections to the skin were quite common on that period of time due to the monsoon season. However most of the patients that came to Dr Sapna were young girls with various severity of acne problems.
"As a dermatologist, it is very common that young girls that have reached puberty come to me to treat their acne problems or scars. I could not be of a much help except in severe cases of course because pimples and acnes are just part of puberty due to hormonal changes," explained Dr. Sapna to me after seeing a long queue of young girls and boys waiting to see her. I could only smile knowing that at such age, looking good is pretty much everything to these teenagers.