On Pain and Suffering- Notes from Rural Chhattisgarh
Hunger and Undernutrition are deep problems in this part of India. A 2002 study in Bilaspur found that 41% of men and 43% of women had a BMI (body mass index) of less than 18.5. People with a BMI under this threshold are considered to be underweight.
I’m writing from a hospital in rural central India, where I’m spending several months as a volunteer at Jan Swasthya Sahyog (People’s Health Support Group), an organization that runs a hospital and various community services in a marginalized tribal region of Chhattisgarh state. I’ve never been around so many sick patients- every day I see people with tuberculosis or cancer or kidney disease- and so much malnutrition. I don’t really know what to make of so much acute on chronic pain. I remember the first day I got here, I witnessed a woman with a muscle eating bacteria get her dressing changed. I could see the whites of the bones in her leg, yet when the doctor scrubbed at her open wound, she didn’t make a sound. She just lay there, her eyes gently closed. When I asked the doctor how she didn’t cry out, he told me that she was used to it. “She’s used to the pain,” was what he said. (more…)