Rebecca Hope's blog

Tribal Health Programme, India

August 14, 2005 by Rebecca Hope

I arrived last week in Gudulur, in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu, India.

The district is home to around 28,000 adivasi or indiginous tribal people, who populated the area's forests as hunter gathers long before the British arrived to plant tea in the days of the Raj. Many were displaced from their original areas by settlers and government leglislation and are among the poorest groups in this state.

ASHWINI (www.ashwini.org) was set up in the late 1980s as a health care system for the adivasi population, which is made up of diverse ethnic groups. The programme consists of 8 rural centres and one 20 bed hospital which is staffed mainly by adivasi staff who have been trained as nurses, accountants, administrators and health 'guides' working in the villages.

The new UK medical careers system: room for global health?

May 27, 2005 by Rebecca Hope

I'll be one of the first UK doctors going into the all new 'modern' medical careers system. I feel like I've got my head round the F1 F2 programme thanks to Gaz's article and some nice articles by Rhona Macdonald in the BMJ, but the specialist training thing seems a bit more complicated.

Looking on the BMA website's explanation of it all (http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/shapeofspclsttraining) didn't make things much clearer. It seems like there is now a specialist fast track route, whereby you decide during your F2 years (2 meagre years fresh from medical school) your career path and bingo: a consultant in just ten years.