The Clinical study of "the Hemoglobe project"

The Clinical study of "the Hemoglobe project"

Anemia contributes to more than 100,000 maternal deaths and 600,000 newborn deaths each year. To save lives of these mothers and newborns, Jhpiego and our program have developed HemoGlobe, a low-cost anemia screening tool. The HemoGlobe has a finger clip sensor and a cell phone in its system.

At this stage of the development process, we are assisting the HemoGlobe field study to collect hemoglobin readings from the gold standard blood-draw test and use these values to improve training of the HemoGlobe machine learning algorithm.

Colonel Bannerjee and Mr. Anil (center and right of center in the above picture) were instrumental in organization of the event, logistics and getting the word out in the Sundarbans. This resulted in nearly 140 people showing up on the first day.

We enjoyed our off-road trip to each village. On your right, you will see that in order to get to the last-mile india village is quite an adventure.

Children there are very excited to have us. We were chatting with them, but with our physical language, smiles and laughters.

Introduction to Rural Medical Practitioner (RMP) 101

Introduction to Rural Medical Practitioner

Our first introduction for the Rural Medical Practitioner (RMP) was met with some shocking insights. First of all, the RMP are the group of people who are known as the “local doctors.” They have their own medicine shop and typically RMP have the capability to prescribe medications and take basic medical readings such as blood pressure, temperature, examine abdominal pain. Typical illnesses they treat are diarrhea, headaches, cold, cough, malaria, dysentery, and typhoid.  From there the RMP usually prescribes medication and charges only for the prescription.
training.

We used the "van" as a transportation to visit each RMP's kiosk. It a van without a shock absorber. It feels like we are in a race car; the car tells you every detail on what's going on on the road surface.

 On your right is the kiosk of one of the RMPs. It a pretty small chamber which can fit 3-4 people at a time. There are no A/C or fans. It has a load of medicines ready to prescribe to villagers.

At the back of some kiosks, they have beds for IV patient. Most of those patients have diarrhea and need IV treatment. Those beds do not have any fancy things but a simple flat wooden table and a beam to hang the saline bag.















Team Kolkata Nights