Global Health Intensive Course, 2025 in Manipal, India

  Thoughts on our intensive course on the day of departure from Manipal   Written by Sari & Eveliina Our departure day was as sunny and warm as the other days of our intensive course. In addition to the colorful souvenirs which we bought from clothing stores, markets and shopping malls, we are taking home a big backpack full of knowledge about the public health care system and its infrastructure in Manipal and Udupi area, and a rich cultural experience of the state of Karnataka.    On the second day of the course program, director of Prasanna School of Public Health, Dr. Cherian Varghese started his lecture by saying “What the mind does not know, the eyes do not see”. As the world is getting smaller and multicultural development of societies is a global phenomenon, this statement very well describes the value of our experience provided by Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Coming from Finland, the cultural, geographical, financial, linguistic and religious dive...

Friday 28th February Written by Krista & Ansa Our last day at Prasanna School of Public Health greeted us with heated temperatures, playful stray puppies in front of the food court and spicy breakfast food – spicy at least to some of us. The last day arrived at the same time fast and slow. We had seen so much during the week that the five day program felt like double the time, but at the same time the end of our visit arrived quickly enough for us to hope for an extension. Due to the versatile and full schedule on our trip, it felt like all the information, imagery and memories attained from the visit needed some time to arrange to a time line.   After the breakfast, we hopped to the familiar yellow school bus to take us to the first field visit of the day, a primary health center. Once we arrived to the destination, low yellow building, we noted that the walls of The Primary Health Center were covered with public health posters informing patients of various health related topi...

 Thursday 27th February 2025 Written by Meri & Elina Few  of us begun  the day   early   at 6 am  for a yoga class  at the  bottom floor  of our hostel .  The class was aimed for  locals but  luckily held in English.  After  the  relaxing yoga session, all of us gathered  at the lobby of our hostel at 7.50 am   and headed for breakfast at the  campus cafeteria  as usual .   The  first field visit of the day was  to a Rural Maternity and Child Home   located  outside the city.  We  got to enjoy beautiful scenery   o n the bus and  drove along a winding  dirt road lined by palm trees.  However, coming from a country with scarce traffic ,  we had a few scares on the narrow road with incoming traffic.     The Rural Maternity and Child Home was founded in 1956 and aims to improve access to and use of maternal and child health...

 Wednesday 26th February 2025 Written by Natasha It was the third day of the trip, and we had two visits planned for the day- one to the pasteurization plant and the other to the water treatment plant. After a fulfilling breakfast at the New International Hostel mess, we boarded the bus for the first visit at 9 am. After around 30 minutes of a rather bumpy ride, we reached the Dakshina Kannada Co-op Milk Producers Union Ltd., accompanied by two students and a teacher from MAHE. After some formalities and documentations at the entrance, we entered the pasteurization plant. We were given a thorough tour of the entire setting by a staff, who mentioned that the plant had a capacity of 2 lakh 50 thousand litres of dairy production. Although we could not take pictures inside the plant, we were shown different machineries and their working mechanisms, which was quite fascinating. For most of us, it was our first exposure to something of this sort. We watched the production of different ty...

Tuesday  25th February 2025 Written by Laura & Kamilla   Welcome  on  board   of  our   second   official   programme   day .  We   had  a  full   day   ahead  of us—and  somehow   managed  to  squeeze  in an extra  tourist  stop on top of  everything   else !     Yesterday ,  on  our   first   o fficial   day  of  the   programme   after   we   managed  to  survive   the   furious   trials  of  registrations  ( Tiina’s   post ),  we   learned   about   the  Indian  health   care   system   structure   in a  lecture   by  Dr.  Sumit .   To day   our   day   began   with  an  insightful   lecture   by  Dr.  Cherian   Var...