A rope and two bricks form a traction device for a woman with a broken femur in a government-sponsored hospital in Delhi, India. The same injury receives state-of-the-art treatment in the city’s private hospitals. The differences in India’s healthcare system are as vast as those within its class structure, and the country still clings to its pagan traditions. Yet Campbell University student Stephen Sloan found much to admire and love about India while shadowing doctors in some of its poorest hospitals this summer. A rising senior, Sloan is a pre-med major who was part of a mission trip to India sponsored by his home church Faith Free Will Baptist of Goldsboro, N.C. Visiting government-sponsored hospitals in which people with everything from broken bones to infectious diseases are crowded into huge open waiting areas and allowed to wander in and out of operating rooms, Sloan and his teammates were awed and humbled by the conditions and the dedication of the doctors.”They don’t get paid like American doctors. To think that one of those doctors could come to the United States and be a top physician and still choose to stay in India, my respect went right through the roof for those guys,” he said.After shadowing doctors for a couple of days, the mission team was allowed to assist with diagnoses and even aid with surgical procedures. Sloan sutured the arm of a three-year-old girl with tetanus who had received intravenous medication.”Her jaw was locked and her abdomen was already taut,” Sloan said sadly. “I’m not sure the little girl made it. Many people still believe in witch doctors and only come to the hospital as a last resort.”Bordering the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal between Burma and Pakistan, India is a land of contrasts. It is slightly more than one-third the size of the United States, yet only five percent of its 1.5 billion people can afford a private hospital and the best health care.”The people are definitely poor and underserved medically,” Sloan said. “It broke my heart to see a man limping on the side of the road because of a broken leg he could not afford to have treated at a hospital.”The number of young women brought to the hospital with severe burns due to a pagan tradition called the Dowry System was also devastating, Sloan said.”These women had been doused with kerosene and set on fire because their families could not provide a suitable dowry. Most of them die because the infection rate is so high in India,” he said. Yet Sloan recommends traveling to India because of its life-changing impact.”If I could go back there, I would,” he said. “It opened my eyes to what is happening in the world and to the possibility of practicing foreign medicine.”Sloan is the son of Walter and Peggy Sloan and is majoring in Pre-Med courses and secondary education. He was elected secretary/treasurer of his senior class at Campbell and is a member of the Pre-Med Allied Health Honor Society and the Walker Biology Club. Sloan also established the Campbell Association for Rising Educators (CARE) organization to help students make the transition from education classes to classroom teaching. Photo Copy: Campbell University student Stephen Sloan with children from a village in India. Sloan shadowed doctors in poor Indian hospitals and even assisted with surgery as part of a mission trip this summer.
Sloan would return to India