Vellore, Christian Medical College History

We spent the majority of our first day at the Christian Medical College (CMC) getting our schedules and making contacts for our first rotation, the Community Health rotation (C.H.A.D-- community health & development). The director gave us this really fascinating personal lecture about the CMC and how it was all started.

Ida Scudder was founder of CMC and the daughter of a missionary physician. She decided to leave India when she was 18 because she 'hated it' and had no interest in following her father's footsteps. She did not want to stay in India and she certainly was not interested in practicing medicine. Years later, Ida Scudder returned to India because her mother had fallen ill. She had been studying English Literature but returned to India because of her mother. During the time Ida Scudder was back in India, she had a unique experience one late night.

There were three separate incidents of men who came to the door pleading for help. Each man was the husband of a woman who was in labor and desparately needed a female physician's help. Each time a man came to the door begging for help, Ida Scudder stated that she could not help and had nothing to offer. The next morning, she awoke to the sound of drums. This could only mean one of three things: a wedding, a birth, or a death. Unfortunately, the drums were the sound of death. All three women had died during childbirth.

Ida Scudder then realized that she was unable to help these women and ultimately, prevent their deaths. it was at that moment, that Ida Scudder realized she had a calling. She started the CMC as an ALL women's medical school. It remained an institution for only women until 1950. Very inspirational! And very cool. When she first decided to become a medical provider in India, Ida Scudder had decided that she did not want to build a standard hospital. She figured that anyone who would go to a hospital 1) knew they were sick 2) knew where to get help 3) could afford to get help. The people she wanted to heal didn't have any of those things. Instead, the underserved communities she wanted to help 1) Did not know if they were sick 2) would not where to go 3) could not afford the health care they needed. She truly wanted to provide for the underserved and created the CMC as a vehicle to do so.

The educational structure that was created focused on community health education. All students were required to learn about health in the community. However, the medical students protested the idea of classroom learning and decided that they wanted to learn about community health IN the communities. The students created a rural health clinic so they could learn about community health up close. And later, the communities demanded that healthcare be provided in the process. This was definitely the beginnings of a student-run clinic! Now, there are clinics in every local community in Vellore! To this day, students continue to get training in community health, epidemiology, and public health.

There is a detailed structure of community health providers. More on this later. In general, there is a health worker who lives in the community, 3 nurses for every 15,000 people, and 3 doctors for every 45,000 patients. There are health aids, home nursing visits, and mobile doctor clinics.

The CMC is the most prestigious medical school in India. They accept 60 students per year. They have tertiary care facilities, imaging, lab tests, modern day everything all the way down to the community level with mobile clinics and home visits by nurses and physicians who go into the villages to provide health care. It is a really impressive health system. They also do an amazing job of utilizing epidemiology & statistical methods to track people & diseases, and provide a truly community-based health effort.