Mapping India's Kumbh Mela
Research on the interdisciplinary aspects of world health at the Kumbh Mela and the development of educational materials are co-sponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute, as part of its priority focus on urbanization, together with the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and the Harvard School of Public Health.
The public health challenges and opportunities of the Mela are enormous. There were multiple teams focusing on different aspects of health that were part of Harvard’s Mapping India’s Kumbh Mela project.
The Team:
Jennifer Leaning, FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health; Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University
Satchit Balsari, Fellow, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Director, Weill Cornell Global Emergency Medicine Program
Gregg Greenough, Fellow, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Director of Research, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Pooja Agrawal, Clinical Instructor in Emergency Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine Aaron Heerboth, Medical student at Weill Cornell Medical College
Rishi Madhok, Chief Resident, NewYork-Presbyterian Emergency Medicine Residency
Dhruv Kazi, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Division of Cardiology, University of California San Francisico
Neil Murthy, MPH student, Harvard School of Public Health
Logan Plaster, Publisher, Emergency Physicians International
Michael Vortmann, Director, Weill Cornell Wilderness Emergency Medicine Program
In collaboration with:
The National Disaster Management Authority
The Rotaract Club of the Caduceus, Mumbai
And faculty and students from:
Motilal Nehru Medical College Community Medicine Department
Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture
Blog entries from this team:
http://mappingthemela.wordpress.com/category/health/
Photo Credit: Meena Hewett
Another team mapped and documented the various kinds of toilets being used at the Kumbh, as well as the provisions that were made by public health officials for potable drinking water. While the number of toilets was insufficient during large bathing days, the team was impressed by the implementation of this infrastructure. The lessons learned from the building of these systems on a mass scale in a short amount of time are huge for the developing world.
The Team:
Faculty Lead: Richard Cash, MD, MPH, Senior Lecturer, Harvard School of Public Health
Student Researchers: Candace Brown, Stephanie Cheng and Leila Shayegan
Blog entries from this team:
http://mappingthemela.wordpress.com/category/sanitation/
Harvard Gazette news article on these teams:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/03/tracking-disease/
Photo Credit: Sam Higginbottom