People can stop the spread of Disease.
It is important to teach the idea that people have a certain amount of responsiblity to try to improve their own health and to improve the health of others in their community. We live in a time of available education and breakthroughs in illness treatment, and depending on what happens in the next few years in India, people there
Prevention
The developed world spends an obscene and futile amount of money on cure.
People in wealthy countries work in bliss for a while, without
taking care to learn how to care for their bodies. They become ill,
and then pour out huge sums of money on experimental treatments which sicken them,
do not cure the problem, and support a whimisical pharmaceutical industry
which is riding a wave of panic and doing things without the forethought
which go into other branches of research. There is a lot of waste
without much to show for in modern medical research and treatment.
In a major way, India is fortunate that it does not have an abundance of money to treat the sick. For many diseases, using resources to treat the sick is a humane gesture which simply does not do much good for public health, and honestly does almost no physical good for the sick person. The money that goes into extending one AIDS-threatened life by ten years with medications could be instead used to thoroughly educate ten thousand others in India, easily. India by necessity is forced to put the largest percentage of its limited health resources into prevention, and it may be a boon that there is hardly another option.
Sanjeevani Booti is primarily a preventative education organization. We tell people about the natural causes of diseases, how they are spread, how they might be prevented, and what they should do to teach others in their community. We advertise our office and we do outreach in the city of Varanasi, population 1.4 million. There is no other organization here doing what we do. Our mission is vital to the future of India.
Counseling
Varanasi is a dense city with a major University. It gets a lot of tourism,
so money flows through outgoing people. The density and the money
make for stress and ways to relieve stress. It is probably safe to say
that people in Varanasi are more likely to casually enter sexual
relationships than people in more rural areas in India, particularly
young people who move here for school. Afghani heroin comes through the
city on its way to the ports of Kolkata (Calcutta). It is cheap,
and due to industrial constraints, it is more of a money burden to purchase
syringes than it is to buy the heroin. These are urban issues
which exist in all cities.
Education is a type of counseling, and Sanjeevani Booti starts here. We find populations who are statistically probable to be engaging in some risky behavior, and we tell them about disease. Sometimes, for some people, we refer them to the hospital to get free testing for HIV. We do not do this for everyone, because our resources are limited to do anything special for anyone who tests positive, but we want to set the precedent and let people know that they are able to know their HIV status, if they want to know.
We go on the streets and talk to people. We give pamphlets and flyers. We have social meetings with lesson plans, tea, and biscuits. We do what we can with what we have to work with.
Fitness
Indians have long associated exercise and correct eating with good health.
Lack of fitness is a problem in obese Western countries, but not so
much in India. Smoking is considered decadent here, so there are few
young problems. People here use tobacco and betelnut in a mixture
called paan, which is absorbed by keeping it in the mouth.
We cannot make people stop using paan because they would oppose
that more than they oppose anything else about our organization. But
we teach about mouth cancer, which is a major cause of death in India.
Whether a person is healthy or sick, we encourage yoga. Having good joints and good circulation prevents a lot of discomfort and opens opportunities throughout life. Sanjeevani Booti invites all people to exercise, especially through yoga.
Antibiotics
The term "antibiotics" refers to a specific class of medications
which kill bacteria in the body. Antibiotics are cheap
and available to most people in Varanasi. They need to be used
for a period of time which is long enough to kill all the bacteria
which are causing illness; otherwise, the bacteria gain immunity.
Sanjeevani Booti advises people to use antibiotics according
to a doctor's advice.
Vaccination
The body naturally heals itself. When there is some disease
in the body, the body makes its own cure which flows through the
blood. This cure, made from special immune system cells, is different
for every type of every disease because the body custom makes it
for each disease. It takes a certain amount of time for the body
to design the immune system cells, and until they are made, a person
will be sick.
Sometimes a disease is very bad, and people know that it is spreading. In that case, people want their body to be ready to attack the disease as soon as they are exposed to it. To prepare themselves, they take a vaccination. A vaccination is when you take a bacteria or a virus in the laboratory and make it weak or dead. The scientist might heat it up, or poison it, but it will not be very strong. The doctor takes the vaccine and injects it to a person, and then their body designs immune system cells to attack it. Because the vaccination is just dead bacteria or virus, a person does not get sick, but still is able to make the cure.
Many bacterial diseases are not worth getting vaccinations for, because antibiotics are so easy to use. Many viral diseases have no cure, though, so people do get vaccinations for those. Researchers have made vaccinations for Hepatitis A and B and for HPV. A vaccine for HIV is probably the best hope for controling the spread of AIDS, but scientists are still trying to make this.
Antivirals
The term "antivirals" refers to a specific class of medications
which kill viruses in the body. Antibiotics are expensive
and not available to most people in Varanasi. They need to be used
for a period of time which is long enough to kill all the viruses
which are causing illness; otherwise, the viruses gain immunity.
Antivirals often have foul side effects, and in many cases they will not kill all the bad viruses in a person's body - they just reduce the viral load temporarily, and then the person gets sick again. People with HIV take antivirals to add a few more years to their lives, but the medicine will not cure them.
Chemotherapy
The term "chemotherapy" refers to a specific class of medications
which kills lots of things in the body. Chemotherapy are expensive
and not available to most people in Varanasi.
Chemotherapy is a broad term and can include antibiotic or antiviral treatments. The difference is that chemotherapy is always sweeping death for lots of organisms and units in the body - it is not entirely selective for particular things. Chemotherapy almost always makes a person very sick for a while, but it can be effective for reducing the harm of some diseases, like cancer or HIV.
