Tradition

I often travel in social circles where people have a respect and even reverence for tradition and rituals. I often hear arguments about how mankind flourished for millennia before modern medicine was invented. Or maybe more accurately, there are treatments and practices that have been passed down –tested and re-tested – for centuries that can just as effectively cure people as pills, procedures and PhDs. I have heard and seen much denigration of mainstream medicine in favor of alternative medicine. And in some cases, it seems right and necessary to question whether MDs are too quick to prescribe a drug or focus too much on treating symptoms over root problems.

However, traveling to Koraput it’s clear that tradition alone is inadequate to treat a population. Koraput has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate in Orissa – a state that has one of the highest IMR and MMR rates in India (71 out of 1000 children do not reach their first birthday; an additional 50 do not reach their fifth). Most of these deaths are entirely preventable through things like immunizations (i.e. TB and polio) or behavior change (i.e. regular hand washing to prevent communicable diseases or stopping children from playing in stagnant water to decrease incidences of malaria). One of the biggest public health pushes right now is to encourage mothers to breastfeed within an hour of giving birth. The yellowish breast milk that is produced during that time contains nutrients and antibodies that can significantly boost child survival rates. But tradition dictates that mothers refrain from feeding the child until the milk is a more whitish color, even if it takes days.

While in Koraput I talked to doctors, midwives and health workers asking them what they think is the biggest roadblock to reducing IMR and MMR. As I am researching government support mechanisms (and because everyone likes to blame the government for problems), I expected answers like insufficient supplies of medicine, delays in the receipt of funds or inadequate trainings. But time and time again, the workers mostly pointed to tradition itself as the biggest challenge to saving lives.