An Education

On Thursday last week we spent another day at the Community Health Clinic in one of the slum areas on the outskirts of Delhi and saw more of the amazing work that is done there. Thursday is one of the main outpatient days, and queues and queues of people lined up, hovering next to one of the doctors to make sure they didn't miss their turn. Everyone is in one big room and are seen one after another - brief consultations are all that is possible to fit everyone in! Complaints were wide and varying from women's health to TB and infertility to skin problems. Everyone was seen and hopefully left feeling that their problems had been addressed. 

A lot of the doctors at the clinic are women, and it is really interesting to talk to them about their experiences as women in India and as female doctors in India. This week we spoke to them about how some of the women that come to the clinic here cannot leave the house unless they are with a man - either their husband or someone from their husbands family. The female literacy rate amongst these populations is very low, and across India as a whole is only 64% (for comparison the male rate is 82%). India currently has the largest illiterate population in the world, which obviously has a huge knock on effect for health, welfare and poverty. One of the big issues here, which the clinic is trying to address is that of contraception. Methods such as the pill are too expensive, and not used much and certainly not at all in poorer communities such as this. Condoms are the only real method available,  but they often have trouble getting them to be used as they have found that men in this community often are very reluctant to use them or refuse to even discuss it. They are also very expensive. Sterilisation is offered once women don't want any more children, but many women are unable to have this because of religious beliefs. As a result of all of this, a lot of the women we are seeing here have 5 or 6 (or more) children, putting a huge strain on them and the rest of their family. 

Having more mouths to feed means that women often have their marriages arranged quite young - the legal age of marriage in India is 18, but we saw one girl today who was married aged 15. When of course, the problem of having more children to feed begins again as a new generation emerge. 

The doctors I have spoken to believe that one of the most important things for helping to empower these women and to try and reduce the poverty these families are living in, is education - particularly for women. They are doing what they can at this clinic to address this, but they can only do things on a small scale in this one community. The problem is huge. Doing a bit of googling soon revealed some shocking statistics - The National Family Health Survey collected data reporting that only 37.7% of children in India completed primary school, and it is estimated that at least 35 million and possibly as many as 60 million (roughly the population of the whole of the UK) children aged 6-14 are not in school.

This has all had a big impact on us, particularly as two female doctors (well almost). Getting a good state education, going to university and being able to become a doctor were things we had completely taken for granted. To think that when we were kids, going to school was a boring thing we had to do and we counted down the days until the holidays when we could play and escape the routine of school is almost shameful. It would be amazing if one day children all around the world could take an education like we had for granted and moan to their friends about their boring maths homework, not realising what an incredible thing it is to be able to do that. 

As Nelson Mandela said "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

A young girl exploring the monuments in Lodi Gardens