Keepin On Keepin On

Work has not only picked up, but taken off at a full sprint over the past two weeks or so. I continue to spend Monday and Wednesday mornings in the Reproductive and Child Health unit of the government clinic, assisting with vaccine administration to adorable Ghanaian babies.

Outside of the clinic, I am still conducting interviews about tuberculosis with the two other Public Health volunteers. We aim to conduct 200 surveys in each of five nearby communities, and will then compose a report of our findings. The Ghana Health Service requested the assistance of Cheerful Hearts Foundation to gain perspective of the local knowledge about tuberculosis. Our final report will be a response to this request.

In addition to the research we gather for this report, we also give tuberculosis talks at local schools. The week I arrived in Ghana was the beginning of a national two-week school vacation, so I did not begin these school talks until more recently. I enjoy the talks because the children in Ghana speak English more comfortably than the adults, and they are receptive to and understanding of the information we present to them. The adults we interact with for the interviews are often more difficult to converse with due to the language barrier.

Tuberculosis school talk 

Even with these given tasks, my Public Health partner-in-crime Claire and I were getting antsy with lack of activity. We usually finished with our workdays around 1:00PM, and then were left with too many hours of muggy daylight to whittle away at by checking our Facebooks and Instagrams over the unreliable and painfully slow Internet connection available in our cramped office.

I have mentioned briefly the goal we created to create a free health screening for the community we conducted our first interviews in, Nyanyano. What started as a small thought seedling has blown up incredibly in the past few weeks and we are now up to our ears planning to hold not one but two separate screenings in the next month.

We initially wanted to hold a free tuberculosis screening since this is the disease that most of our work focuses on. However, our director Eric heard that we wanted to hold a community screening and insisted that we consider Hepatitis B, as it is currently a more prevalent and less treated threat in Ghana.

Claire and I researched both diseases and their respective vaccination processes and costs. We met with Mr. Tahir, the administrator of a local private hospital who has worked with Eric in the past on screening projects. Mr. Tahir, like Eric, was insistent that we focus on Hepatitis B. He offered to help with the screening by providing nurses and lab technicians as well as discounted vaccines and corresponding necessary materials.

We calculated the cost per person and targeted a demographic. Children are especially vulnerable to Hepatitis B. Due to close proximity to others in schools combined with lack of knowledge about personal hygiene, they play a key role in transmitting the virus from person to person. We chose a demographic of children attending a government school in Nyanyano, a fishing village about 20 minutes from where we live in Kasoa. The children at the government school are the poorest of the poor. We chose to target 400 students in grades 4, 5, and 6.

 Year 4 children at the Nyanyano D.A. Government School

A vaccine series consists of three separate shots given a month apart each and costs 50 Ghanaian cedes (roughly $18 US). Ghanaians work primarily with small amounts of money and are stingy with anything over 10 cedes or so. Everything is bartered and people are meticulous about being exact with transactions. Though $18 US seems like a small price to pay for a potentially life-saving immunization, most Ghanaians are highly unlikely to ever shell out an amount that large for one thing.

Claire and I went to the Nyanyano District Assembly Government School and met with the assistant headmistress, who welcomed our proposal. We returned the next week to meet with the headmaster and secured dates for the immunizations. We calculated a monetary goal and created an informational website at GlobalGiving.org (link below). We are in the hard-core stages of fundraising and have quite a lofty goal, but are determined to utilize all resources to reach it in a month.

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/hepatitis-b-vaccination-for-ghanaian-children/ 

If that doesn’t seem like a full plate already… I mentioned we had decided to plan two screenings. The other is for tuberculosis. I felt like since our work here focuses on TB, I really wanted to follow through with that disease and provide a screening for the people we have interviewed for our Ghana Health Service research. The government pays for screening, vaccinations for children under age 15, and treatment for anyone with TB. People do not utilize the services however, mostly because of the inconvenience of commuting to a government clinic.

Claire and I came up with an idea to charter tro-tros (busses) to take patients from the community to the labs where they can be tested for tuberculosis. We met with Eunice, the amazing, no-nonsense, power businesswoman administrator at the Nyanyano government clinic. That clinic does not have a lab, so we need to collaborate with two other local clinics with the appropriate facilities.

So we paid visits to Dr. Senya at the Liberian Refugee Camp’s hospital and the administrator Sarcodei at Kasoa Polyclinic. We created formal proposals for all the key players and have been taxi-ing all over Central Ghana meeting with one, many, or all of them each day.

There are many conflicting opinions about details such as the form of screening we should use (skin testing vs. sputum collection) and whether we should transport the patients themselves or just their samples, which we can collect on-site. Everyone seems to have different input but no one has the time to all meet at once so Claire and I are definitely being challenged to keep it all straight.

We met again with Eunice yesterday, who is planning a debah (“day-bah”) (don’t spell check me there) on May 29. The debah is a community event during which the screening will be introduced and the locals will be educated about tuberculosis. Eunice has a team of two Ghanaian TB outreach members and one Ghanaian volunteer who will execute this debah (the language barrier will make it hard for Claire and I to head it up). We are funding the canopy and chair rentals however and are praying our fundraising efforts pan out.

The planning process is exhausting but I know it will be worth it.

Even with all this craziness during the week I make sure to get some adventure in on the weekends (priorities!). I’ll try to crank out another entry soon detailing the waterfall hike I took on Sunday. In the meantime I’d love it if you can check out our Global Giving page or “like” my post on my Facebook so it attracts more traffic. Prayers and emails/blog comments are always welcome too! I love to hear from anyone who’s following. 


Emily