Day 5: Pulpit Rock Hike and Last day with Laerdal

August 6th, 2014
Everybody woke up excited today- it was the last day and Laerdal had arranged a hike to the Pulpit Rock in the evening, a must-do thing for anyone visiting Norway.

Presentation of On-going Projects & Possible Collaborations 

In the morning both, CBID and Laerdal, presented interesting ongoing projects. Prof. Acharya and the Hemoglobe team shared their plans to continue this year's project and how they envisioned Hemoglobe as a platform to combine all non-invasive technologies: what they called Hemoglobe ++. Helge and Ida presented Laardal's projects on 'Kangaroo Mother Care' and 'Safer Births'. It was really interesting to learn about the barriers and feedback on the KMC projects due to the interplay of several socio-cultural factors around its use.

Needs in the Maternal Health Space

Workshops in the afternoon involved spending 30 min each, in 3 groups, discussing needs in (a) Kangaroo Mother Care, (b) Maternal wards in low-resource settings and (c)  Elements in improving training for using vacuum assisted births. This served as a very good start for thinking of ideas before the field immersion trips in terms of identifying what needs to look for within this space.

Pulpit Rock Hike!

After much anticipation, we all picked up our brand new blue bag packs (thanks Laerdal) loaded with picnic boxes and left for the Pulpit Rock hike. We joked about how the blue bags were given to us to identify any lost CBID members! It took us around 5 hours to complete the hike. While most of us were quite tired by the end of it,  Ida, Helge (from the Laerdal team) and other Norwegian folks seemed to treat it like an evening walk and even said it was an easy level hike in Norway. With lakes, mountains and breathtaking scenery, it was pretty clear why Norwegians loved hiking and outdoor activities so much. It was definitely not surprising to find out that Norways ranks on top of the list of the people who spend money on the sports equipment. The lakes and refreshing views seemed to rejuvinate us along the way and there certainly couldn't have been a better way to culminate our Norway trip. Tired and having thoroughly enjoyed the educational experience in Norway, it was time to say goodbye and go prepare for the next leg of our journey, India!