A Visit to Uluru Health Care Centre – January 2018
a Report by Roy Karna - Medical Director
Dear Valued friend,
Having just returned from our health care facility in South India the purpose of this report is to bring you up to date with the changes that have taken place and to offer my profound thanks to all the supporters of the Uluru Health Care Centre. The health care centre has been the foundation pillar on which The East West Overseas Aid Foundation has been built having started in 1998. Our beginnings were humble, modest and by and large restricted to intermittent doctor care, nursing and social work support, and probably our most potent medicine to the grossly disadvantaged rural and fishing community was offering a caring and compassionate ear to help unburden their needy souls.
Virtuous causes have however, a propensity to flourish and over time the health service offered in-house medical practitioners complimenting the paramedical staff; we developed a mobile clinic with a “trusty but rusty” rotary donated van; we provided community advice via our nurses and social workers regarding social issues such as alcoholism, diabetes and women’s health and social issues. Needless to say, the volume of patients, the magnitude of the problems, and our limited volunteer driven logistic and funding restrictions made our care quite limited. Ironically, though we gave so little to those who had so little, the gratitude and appreciation we received was so heart-warmingly great
Our Ambulance of the Past and Mobile Clinic out Reach Work
Here are some of our grateful Patients,
Our very own Dr Premnath and
a Visiting GP from Australia.
We have over the last five to eight years, with your help, and a dedicated group of staff been able to make tangible differences to the care that we administer. We now have a full-time doctor, Dr S Premnath; whose enthusiasm and competence knows no bounds for the local community of 40,000 that we service. The clinic now sees 120-150 patients a day, six days a week for 11 months of the year. We have a dedicated pharmacist and a pharmacy licence, we have an embryonic computerised record system (second hand computers donated by a pharmaceutical company) and we have made giant strides in improving the bricks and mortar infrastructure of our health centre.
Allow me to show the difference with some of these pictures.
This was our clinic and treatment area of yesteryear
We now have provided shade for those waiting to be seen, we have much cleaner and more professional indoor waiting areas and consulting rooms to treat the children of our foundation and the local community and we have the capacity to perform basic testing. Most importantly however, we have now a gynaecologist attending our clinic on a regular basis as cultural taboos prevented the women folk previously attending a male doctor.
Today's Clinic
The major achievement through your kind support over the years is however the building of a treatment facility where surgical procedures can be performed, road trauma victims can be treated, emergency snake bite situations can be dealt with and fishing trauma accidents and other emergencies can be treated. I had the pleasure of opening this facility in January 2018 and having previously worked in India and being aware of treatment options in India.
Divine Blessings for the new Emergency and Operating Area
l can assure you our facility is second to none as far as rural/village India is concerned and better than many facilities that can be offered in some of the cities of India.
Operation Theatres Work. Providing unparalleled rural Medical Care
If you are getting a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart as you are reading this, l am glad. The Uluru Health Care Clinic only functions, because of you and your support. Because we support a circumscribed village community and our children’s home, children’s school and staff your donations and support make the tangible, visible difference shown here. I fold my hands in thanking you.
Our mission of course continues and there is much to be done. In the short term we will be seeking simple basic machines to help with doing blood counts, checking kidney and liver function and hopefully to do some basic ultrasound investigations for obstetric and surgical problems. This will mean the villagers won’t have to travel to far away Chennai or Pondicherry for investigation and treatment.
The purpose of this email is to show you and thank you while progressive change is being made. There will be opportunities through the year where if you feel so inclined to further help that you can donate at a time that suits you in our Donation Page and make a donation there, but l would ask you in that instance to please TICK THE BOX FOR THE MONEY TO BE DONATED TO THE MEDICAL CENTRE.
I will keep you updated in our next Report and once more my profound thanks and l will sign off as l always do quoting Mark Twain; “The best way to cheer yourself up… Is to cheer someone else up”,
DR ROY KARNA MBBS FRACP, MEDICAL DIRECTOR.
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