In the summer of 2008, UBC School of Journalism students Anupreet Sandhu Bhamra and Dan Haves travelled to India with Dr. Videsh Kapoor and her UBC medical students who were helping an under-serviced boarding school in a remote Himalayan Valley. The Munsel-Ling boarding school in Spiti Valley is inaccessible for more than six months of a year as heavy snow cuts off the valley from the rest of the world.
This CBC-commissioned documentary looked at the journey of doctors-in-training who in their Canadian classrooms were rarely exposed to the reality of medicine in the vast majority of the world. Soon after reaching the school, the future doctors realized that before they could address the true medical problems at the school, they first had to build basic infrastructure. The story profiles the self-discovery of the medical students as they develop deeper appreciation for the western system of medicine and learn from real-life experiences – an education they wouldn’t find in their Canadian classrooms.
The documentary, called ‘Ordinary Canadians, Extraordinary Impact,’ was broadcast on CBC’s Around the World.