Monday, July 10, 2006
The city formerly known as Bombay
which everyone calls Mumbai now, is my next stop.
I fly out of Delhi this afternoon, and it's a nice easy two hour flight to Mumbai. At this point, it looks like I'll be spending the next six weeks there, which is rather amusing 'cause I packed and planned for being in a remote rural area. So my mosquito net is going with H, since he might actually need it.
H, A and I went out to dinner last night at an Italian/Mediterranean place. I, very magnanimously, let them pick where we were going since they're both heading out to rural areas (Northern Karnataka and Northern Orissa respectively), and I'm going to the dining capital of India. Ha!
My general role in Mumbai, I think, will be to help convince the various private hospitals and providers about the need to actively participate in disease surveillance. The surveillance directors seem to think that an obvious foreigner from a US public health agency will have a little more luck persuading people than local disease surveillance personnel. We'll see if they're right.
Of course, this whole plan could change at any point (up until about 4pm yesterday I was going to Karnataka and H was going to Madhya Pradesh. Who knows where the musical chairs will take us next? :)
I am looking forward to going to Mumbai; I think it will be an interesting city to spend time for awhile (16 million people. Enough said). Although, I do hope I have some opportunity to get out to the more rural areas at some point. An SIA (Supplemental Immunization Activity), a several day long project where volunteers go house to house to immunize every (and I mean every) child under 5 years old (we're taking millions of children in just one state), is being planned for late this month or early August. Perhaps I'll be called out to help monitor that, in which case I would be working in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. We'll see what happens!
More from Mumbai coming soon!
I fly out of Delhi this afternoon, and it's a nice easy two hour flight to Mumbai. At this point, it looks like I'll be spending the next six weeks there, which is rather amusing 'cause I packed and planned for being in a remote rural area. So my mosquito net is going with H, since he might actually need it.
H, A and I went out to dinner last night at an Italian/Mediterranean place. I, very magnanimously, let them pick where we were going since they're both heading out to rural areas (Northern Karnataka and Northern Orissa respectively), and I'm going to the dining capital of India. Ha!
My general role in Mumbai, I think, will be to help convince the various private hospitals and providers about the need to actively participate in disease surveillance. The surveillance directors seem to think that an obvious foreigner from a US public health agency will have a little more luck persuading people than local disease surveillance personnel. We'll see if they're right.
Of course, this whole plan could change at any point (up until about 4pm yesterday I was going to Karnataka and H was going to Madhya Pradesh. Who knows where the musical chairs will take us next? :)
I am looking forward to going to Mumbai; I think it will be an interesting city to spend time for awhile (16 million people. Enough said). Although, I do hope I have some opportunity to get out to the more rural areas at some point. An SIA (Supplemental Immunization Activity), a several day long project where volunteers go house to house to immunize every (and I mean every) child under 5 years old (we're taking millions of children in just one state), is being planned for late this month or early August. Perhaps I'll be called out to help monitor that, in which case I would be working in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. We'll see what happens!
More from Mumbai coming soon!
# posted by Disease Cowgirl @ 10:15 PM 
