Providing Care at 10,000 Feet

Going on a medical mission with the Himalayan Health Exchange to the Himachal Pradesh region of India allowed me to see a part of the world that I had never experienced before. The patient population that we were seeing had very little access, if any, to medical care throughout the year. We had to travel on foot to their villages to provide care because of their remote location. But the trip was quite unforgettable—we spent all our off days hiking through the Himalayas, had night-time views of the Milky Way, and ate more Indian food than we could have ever imagined.The flight from Delhi to Leh was incredible. We could see the mountains peeking through the clouds, giving us our first view of the Himalayas. We landed in Leh, a small town in Himachal Pradesh, after more than 24 hours of flying from Atlanta, and met with our companions while we recovered from our flights and attempted to adjust to the altitude.We left Leh the next morning to drive to our first clinic site, Sarchu. The road there consisted of nine hours of cringe-inducing single-lane roads bordered by treacherous drops. We crossed the Taglang La pass (17,582 feet), the second highest pass in the world, according to the sign at the top. This rapid elevation gain made a number of members on our team feel the effects of altitude sickness, so we were happy to make it down to the relatively low elevation of Sarchu, where we would be camping (13,500 feet). Sarchu itself consisted only of about 50 yards of shacks set o...
Source: Going Global - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs