In India, apart from people who pursue biology in higher education or people educated in schools which focus on a holistic approach, no one understands their own body well. This gap in education and information about this crucial subject is further maintained and widened by hierarchical social structures such as caste and class.

Access to knowledge  which is meant to belong to everyone, is often restricted to an elite few individuals.

Information about their own bodies and health is often gatekept from the very people it affects by being locked behind paywalls in journals and via language and comprehension barriers. This then prevents people from being able to make their own health decisions in an informed manner. It also makes them susceptible to medical misinformation.

In order to challenge that, I love to deconstruct the subject of medicine and health and present it to people to whom it rightfully belongs in a simple and easy manner. In doing so, I hope that we can collectively make informed decisions and also be better advocates. 

And this is where a miniature anatomically accurate model of the human body has helped me immensely. It has helped me not only make information easily understandable to everyone, it also sparks curiosity and joy in everyone who comes in contact with it.

These miniature human body models are almost lifelike! People young and old  get excited to see them, remove their parts and have fun with them saying things like,  'tumhaara dil mere paas hai' (Your heart is with me).

In using these human body models, we hope to bypass barriers to health information, to help people understand their bodies and to reclaim their right to health related knowledge and information.

Living in a relief camp in a conflict zone can be disrespectful and depressing. Conflict often also leads to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in these residents.

A few hours spent teaching about the human body in a relief camp in Manipur were one of the many ways in which we attempted to make people forget their situation and instill happiness and hope.

Here we see the elderly, who are disproportionately affected by the conflict, showing engagement and interest in the session. 

Here the human body model is being used in a role play counselling to show the patient from where the tuberculosis bacilli entered their body.

Sangwari a rural health care organisation in Surguja district Chhattisgarh often uses this human body model to explain health conditions to their patients.

With this new knowledge patients are able to understand and relate to their health conditions better. It is one way to improve compliance to medications and trust in the system as the doctor spends time explaining the condition.

A community health worker from Odisha takes a pic of the skeleton model. The human body and skeleton models were used in the initial workshop of a community health program currently running in rural Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, which are being supported by AID.

Mother and daughter from Ahmedabad, Gujarat being fascinated by the model. The mother used to be a school teacher but always fascinated by human biology and her curiosity persists at 87! 

Members of the community in Saharsa, Bihar, gather around a health worker of the AID community health program to discuss the human body. 

This acts as a magnet, and the conversations go into discussing Anganwadi, the public health system, elections, and health as a right. The enthused community demanded more of such health sessions regularly.

A health worker and coordinator address a community meeting using the human body model to explain hypertension and its consequences in  Bargad, Odisha.

Children and adults stare at the human body in the house of a community health worker in Lundra Block, Surguja, Chhattisgarh.

Every organisation that is part of the AID community health program is given a set of the human body with removable organs and a skeleton model to better understand topics covered in the program and to share the same with the people in the area where they work. 

For those who have never been given an opportunity to learn the assumptions of positions and shapes of internal organs is distorted.

When they find that the position of stomach and kidneys were not as they thought and learn the actual position, they are in utter joyous disbelief as seen in this training session of community health workers in Amrapara, Jharkhand 

While being a simple intervention, this use of a miniature human body model has the potential to bring accessible health information to the doorsteps of many communities across India. This asks us to reimagine the way we talk to patients - to take steps to smash the information asymmetry and treat them as the rightful shareholders of knowledge.

Edited by Christianez Ratna Kiruba
Thumbnail by Gayatri