Week 6, new challenges

The 28th, 29th and 30th July were holiday in Tanzania, due to the end of Ramadan. So the whole Health project team went on an excursion to Pare Mountains and lake Hipe on Sunday and Monday. Nothing better than a break in a place with spectacular views to recharge our energies.

On Tuesday we went back to work and prepare everything to make Thursday and Friday as productive as possible.

Jaime, Gasto and Parra were at the dispensary and they got access to the data of the laboratory. Parra started to analyze the VIH data and Jaime, to collect all the information about the tests done last year and their results. These are great news, that will give a new impulse to our research work.

Luis and I had some meetings with different local NGOs. Population services International is involved in educating local people about malaria and family planning, and they seem interested on helping us with the formation of Hope group. In our seminars, we give the mamas basic knowledge about prevention and community health. But, due to the big interest and commitment they are having, we are planning to go one step forward. We are working on a more complete training program, which will we imparted by local experts during approximately six months. This is a difficult challenge, but we are completely sure that they will take advantage of it and transmit all this knowledge to the rest of the community.

Luis also had meetings with Albane about the organization of the Project, as every week. I visited CCBRT, a local NGO that gives support to children with malformation and disabilities and could maybe, in a future, help us in some specific cases.

Miranda prepared his seminar about anemia and gave it on Friday. Anemia is a very prevalent and severe problem in Msitu, mostly during pregnancy, and mamas are aware of this. That is why they asked for more information on this topic. They were really pleased after the seminar, almost as much as Miranda was.

So this was a short but very productive week, with good feelings and big desires to keep on working and looking forwards.