Mahim Aboli Foundation Hosts 4th Annual 2022 Health Camp
Mahim Aboli Foundation hosted its fourth annual health camp over two days, on November 13 and December 4.
This year’s health camp was made possible by a generous grant from Firefly International, as well as our amazing doctors and volunteers.
As a result of the camp, we were able to provide several different types of checkups to over 100 students from five different Zilla Parishad (government) schools in the Palghar district. Every student received a blood test and went through dermatological, optical, dental and pediatric checkups.
This year’s health camp also marked the launch of our Aboli health app, which a volunteer built to make it easier for us to efficiently collect and keep track of student’s medical records.
On November 13, the Aboli team was up early, setting up the different health stations and getting everything ready. By 9:30 AM, the students started arriving. We gave them some juice and had them sit by school and grade.
We had an informal opening ceremony, where Aboli director Shubhada More gave a speech and introduced our guest speaker, Dr. Dayanand Suryavanshi, who serves as Palghar’s district health officer.
In his opening speech, Dr. Suryavanshi praised Aboli Foundation’s ongoing efforts, calling it a critical player in ensuring students are getting adequate healthcare in their primary years.
We kicked off the health camp by registering every student in our medical app as well as uploading their headshots. Students were then taken to the height and weight station, after which they received their dermatological checkup.
From here, students received their dental checkups, after which they received their optical checkup (a standard eye test to check their eyesight). Aboli Foundation volunteers recorded doctors’ observations in the medical app and made sure every student had been registered into the system.
Dr. Atul Vartak and Dr. Preeti Vartak were two of our dental volunteering doctors. Dr. Atul said he found the experience eye-opening.
“I’m very happy that I could make it today and got to interact with a lot of kids with problems of course but I hope the camps like these help them in the future,” he said.
Dr. Preeti echoed the sentiment, also citing concerns with the number of cavities and other issues students had.
Children have easier access to junk food and we can see its effects clearly, so we really need to take care of it,” she said. “We need to speak to them and guide them, their diet needs to be changed, certain habits need to be changed because they’re taking this for granted. They’re not even really aware of what is happening to their teeth when they eat a piece of chocolate or a packet of wafers so they need to be made aware.”
Dr. Pallavi, our dermatological volunteering doctor, said she expected to see more infections. “There were a few skin issues that were relatively easy to handle so that was good, and I was very happy to interact with all the kids,” she said.
On December 4, the camp was shorter as we only had the pediatric checkup. Students received their general checkup. A week before the camp, all students received a blood test for Complete Blood Count (CBC), so our pediatric doctor, Dr. Vivek Bhortakke, could check all their levels. After receiving their checkup, students were given medicines if we had them immediately available, or a prescription they could use to buy their medicines.
Dr. Vivek said at this year’s health camp, he found the students to have less coughs and cold and a higher quality of health overall. However, about fifteen students had suspected congenital heart disease which require further investigation. This is something Mahim Aboli Foundation plans to investigate further so we can support the students properly.
In terms of our next health camp, Dr. Vivek suggested the students would benefit from more specialist doctor checkups, specifically checkups from a neurologist, cardiologist or endocrinologist, for a deeper, more specific diagnosis. He also said he would like to have more medicines available for skin conditions as well as iron supplements.
“This time what we found was that the course that was required for their anemia was for almost three months and we were not able to give each and every child the complete course,” he said. “Now they will have to go to the PHC centre and take the rest of the medicines so there are many chances that the children will drop out and not go through the full course of medicines.
Aboli Foundation Director Shubhada More says she feels the camp was a success, though there are several things that could have been better.
“Most things ran quite smoothly. There were some chaotic points but everybody was there and all the volunteers were there to help out,” she said. “Though some tasks were not defined, volunteers came forward and took the tasks by themselves. Our medical app—it was not really tested but all volunteers were very keen to adapt to the software so everything went well I think.”
A huge shoutout to all our doctors:
Dentists: Aakanksha Vartak, Atul Vartak, Preeti Vartak, Mayuri Tandel, Darshana Shetty, Samruddhi Gattevar
Dermatologist: Dr Pallavi Utekar
Pediatrician: Dr. Vivek Bhortakke- pediatrician
A round of applause to all our teachers: Poonam Churi, Sangita Raut, Ujjwala Save, Supriya Save, Lalita Tandel, Pratibha Vartak, Ranjana Patil, and Ravina Raut.
A massive thank you to Stacker HQ team for letting us use their platform to build the Aboli medical records app, and a special shoutout to Shreyash Patodia for building it.
Lastly, a round of applause to our volunteers: Manish Patil, Aabha Patil, Ampson Sajesh, Heerr Gala, Hrishaan Shah, Anand Vartak, Sheetal Patel, Tejaswi Vartak, Pooja Vartak, Samiksha Bhortakke Kaustubh Vartak, Krutika Vartak.
