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| Above is the Qutub Minar. It is the oldest Islamic Minar in all of India. It is made of red sandstone and has inscriptions of the Quran. |
We arrived in Delhi on Wednesday morning and headed straight to the Radisson buffet breakfast. The variety of food was absolutely delicious even though we were heavily jet lagged and tired from our long hike to pulpit rock in Norway. After breakfast, the group headed to meet with recent CBID Alumni Anmol Chopra to BD India Headquarters. We learned about BD's efforts in understanding India's healthcare system and attempts to innovate for the extremely poor.
The next afternoon, we headed out to tour Delhi and some of its offerings.
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| The team in front of the President's house. |
After our tour of Delhi, we headed to Haldiram, a chain of restaurants, to have delicious Delhi Chaat. This was the closest we could get to street food without getting ill. We ordered chole bhature, pani puri, bhel puri, and dahi papdi chat. Kevin and Tiffany absolutely loved it and helped Anant and I in devouring everything. Our Delhi Bellies (get it?) were officially stuffed.
Next morning we head to GB Pant, a massive government hospital to understand the public sector. We chatted with local patients as well as several pacemaker reps to understand various parts of the care pathway from patient diagnosis to treatment. This was our first exposure to the Indian healthcare system and were really excited to learn from as many people as possible.
We also met with Dr. Yadav in Faridabad for lunch. Dr. Yadav is a Cardiologist at B.K. Hospital. He diagnosis patients with various heart diseases. He gave us interesting insights into several of the challenges surrounding the uptake of pacemaker therapies across both rural and urban patients. From the left - Nitesh (Medtronic India Rep), Dr. Yadav, Wade (Medtronic US), Anant, Kevin, and Pratik (me).
After meeting with Dr. Yadav, we met the rest of the team at Escorts Hospital. Escorts is a private hospital that serves a lot of the upper - middle class of Delhi. We had a brief meeting with the director of the Electrophysiology department who was able to shed light into some of the challenges surrounding pacemaker implantation.
To the left is a picture of advertising for a dissolving drug eluting stents. Many of the illustrations and claims on the poster were not completely accurate.
We found an awesome jazz place by IIT Delhi. The venue was full of international travels and young Indians looking for a good time in Delhi. We quickly realized from the prices and ambiance (still cheap for USA) that this was the upper middle class and that most of the people in the government hospitals we saw earlier in the day could not afford the cover charge for this place (300 rupees).
