After a good night's sleep, I woke up feeling refreshed and excited because we were to follow the mobile clinic team out of Bodhgaya for a day. Operating 5 days a week, the mobile team attempts to visit as many villages while targeting to visit a specific village every fortnightly. The location of today's visit was the village of Ghonghawa, 6kms away from Bodhgaya towards the Grand Trunk Road linking New Delhi and Kolkata. Just before our 4WD turned into the small track leading to the village, we stopped for a tea break. I would never forget the taste; it was the most wonderful chai (i.e. milk tea) that I had ever tasted in India. Guess how much it cost? It was only Rs2/S$0.06 per cup. Anyway, the freshly fried samosas (potato puffs) tasted great as well.

Alot of villagers were already waiting as our 4WD stopped in front of a school. We helped in the set up by unloading several metal containers (would realised later that these contained bottles of medication) and brought them into a room. The clinic assistants (one of them came from the village) started to prepare packets of mini glucose globules. Instead of distilled water (which is heavy and not practical in terms of transport), these sugar globules are used as a medium for the medication.

The mobile clinic operations were rather simple and systematic; the clinic assistant would collect a number of medical records (nothing more than a slip of paper) and would call the patients into the main room to see the doctor. It was orderly as well; everybody queues up (if not, they might be chided by the doctor). After seeking the consultation, they would proceed to the pharmacy (all in the same room) to collect their medication. This might sound sexist but we realised that male patients do not need to wait (i.e. they could jump queue and see the doctor first). We tried to find out an explanation and were not utterly convinced by the reason that men simply could go first.

Due to their dietary habits (most of them are vegetarians), most patients suffered from Vitamin B deficiency and were prone to suffer from anemia. Thus, I noticed almost all patients were prescribed with Vitamin B Complex pills.

Although there were no health educational lessons being conducted on that day, we understood that it was carried out regularly to remind villagers the importance of personal hygiene and its importance in the prevention of several diseases. Overall, I thought that the entire health program was decently run with staff and management dedicated in making a difference. This, of course, could be considered as a rarity in such a complex environment like India.