'Day 12: The Rat that Scrubbed in and the "Raja" CEO

August 13, 2014

Before we begin talking about today, let us introduce Kesavan. Kesavan is the second member of the Medtronic team to come join the Brady Bunch in India. He arrived early yesterday morning, after about two days of travelling, exhausted and jet lagged. He took the afternoon to rest up yesterday in preparation for a busy week ahead.

Kesavan waiting in the OR

Now on to the story about the rat...

This morning started early for Erin and Kesavan as they were supposed to be watching an ICD implant procedure at 7:00 am. After arriving at the hospital at 6:45 and convincing someone to show them where to get scrubs, they made their way down to the Cath Lab. They soon learned that the 7:00 am procedure was on Indian Standard Time (IST) and it did not actually start until 8:45. Quickly after entering into the OR, Erin and Kesavan witnessed a rat run by them in the corner of the room. Kesavan said it looked like the rat was scrubbed in, so he thought that everything was okay. Suprisingly, no one else in the room seemed to notice the rat or pay much attention to the three times the power went out. Apparently, these are pretty common occurences within these settings.

While Erin and Kesavan were off watching the procedure, the rest of the team was having a slightly different experience over at the Osmania government hospital.

 At Osmania, they met Dr. Syed who was a senior cardiologist there. This was the first visit to a government hospital and everyone was shocked to see the state of affairs there:;physicians were overworked, patients were restless, many slept in the corridor and were tired of waiting. Dr. Syed shed light on the concerns patients have regarding device implantations. We also had the chance to talk to patients in the OPD (Outpatient Department) which helped us understand their experiences and perspectives, plus some staring loopholes in the Indian healthcare system. 

Shruthi and Anant talking with a patients family in the OPD

After meeting with the patients and Dr. Syed, Erin and Kesavan rejoined the team at Osmania. While waiting outside, we managed to catch up with a medical student who was heading to the outpatient diagnostic clinic. We followed her up to the clinic and sat down to discuss her training, responsibilities, and feelings on the Indian Healthcare system. She provided our team with a lot of information about government hospitals and their lack of funding and resources, as well as gaps in the Indian MBBS program. It was an extremely valuable interview from another new perspective.

Interviewing the medical student in the OPD clinic at Osmania

Our next stop for the day was the Aarogyasri Health Care Trust building to meet with Sri K. Dhananjaya Reddy, the CEO of Aarogyasri. We were fortunate enough to be able to get an interview with Mr Reddy through Aditya's connections with the Andrah Pradesh government. During this interview Mr Reddy walked us through the Aarogyasri insurance scheme, including how and why it was developed and the future directions for the scheme and the country. The whole team found this interview to be eye-opening to the benefits that the government run insurance scheme has provided to the state of Andrah Pradesh and the potential future opportunities for continued expansion among other states. Our whole group felt humbled to be in the CEO's presence as he was an extremely high up officer and even had a bell to ring for his personal assistant. We felt like we were in the presence of a king or "Raja".

Aarogyasri Healthcare trust building

Plaque inside of the Aarogyasri building

We left the Aarogyasri meeting and said our goodbyes to Val as he was heading back home to Minneapolis later in the evening.

Kesavan, Shruthi, Anant, Val, Maddie, Jay, Erin, Aditya, and Naresh before saying bye to Val

We then decided to head to Birla Mandhir, a Hindu temple made completely out of marble. It was a nice change of pace and time for us to reflect on what had been a very busy and heavy day. Unfortunately, we were not able to bring our cameras our phones into the temple to capture the incredible marble sculpting and architecture or amazing views of the city, but we did pick up some trinkets and manage to capture a few pictures outside the gate.

Marble statue outside at Birla Mandhir

Team Brady Bunch outside of the temple

So at the end of the day we saw a scrubbed in rat, a king-like CEO, and the serenity of a Hindu temple.

Until next time, Namaste!