The Observer, March 7, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 20
Case students form Health Partnership to help the poor
Pooja Goel and Brendan Trewella, after spending two weeks delivering medical supplies to Guyana, South America in 2005 as a part of a service learning trip organized by CWRU's Global Medical Initiative, decided to form a partnership that ultimately led to the formation of the World Health Partnership.
The World Health Partnership is a not-for-profit organization made up of a group of 13 active members, led by Trewella and Goel, working to improve global health care. Originally, Goel and Trewella, then sophomores, had planned to open a small health clinic in a developing country, but now the WHP has partnered with the Shri Ram Sharnaam Ashram in Gohana, India, to reopen an abandoned hospital.
Goel and Trewella accidentally found the hospital while on a survey trip to India in January 2007. According to Trewella, they had planned to return to the United States "with an idea." That idea turned out to be a hospital, whit a location on respected ashram (temple) grounds near a major bus route that made it ideal for WHP goals. By August, the WHP and the ashram reached an operational agreement regarding the workings of the hospital. Under the agreement, the ashram will renovate and maintain the hospital, while the WHP will staff, equip, and run it with minimal interference from the ashram.
The WHP has come up with a four-year plan on staffing, equipping, and opening the hospital to the surrounding communities. In the first year, they hope to finish and open the first floor, and each succeeding year will open new areas of the hospital to the community. Currently, WHP plans to staff the hospital with a mixture of Indian and American doctors and medical students. Medical supplies –such as gauze will be donated by MedWish International, an organization that saves usable, but expired American medical supplies for use in developing countries. Equipment and medicine will be bought locally, as it will be cheaper for the WHP to buy those in India with U.S. money.
The WHP has also paid careful attention to cultural details and winning the respect of the surrounding village. To maintain respect, the hospital will charge its patients a minimal fee, as "historically, free hospitals don't work." The WHP will also pay attention to the psychological needs of its patients by prescribing injected medication more often than pill medication, as injections are more widely respected by Indian patients, and by offering an alternative to traditional healthcare, rather than a replacement.
In the future, once the basics have been firmly established in the hospital in India, the WHP hopes to add vehicular and educational components to the hospital and shift their focus to establishing hospitals in other developing regions of the world. As for the WHP, Goel and Trewella plan to continue to develop the organization throughout their undergraduate years here at CWRU and their medical school years. Trewella and Goel "have come so far with so little," and they are still looking for committed volunteers to serve their purpose.
