Chipwa village June 2013

Hey so this is chipwa zambia, and in the distance is chipwa Tanzania on the other side of the Kalumbo river. A few months ago we trained 5 community health evangelists from these two villages. This weekend I will be visiting them and following up.

We will also be having a prayer outreach, with some visitors from the states. Chipwa is full of witchcraft animal sacrifices, malaria, polygamy and early marriage. Please pray for us this weekend as we work in Chipwa!


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Community Health Evangelism training

9 communities along Lake Tanganyika were represented, 4 tribal african languages(Bemba, Mambwe, Lungu, Swahilli, 2 countries(Zambia and Tanzania), and 30 people differing in educational standards, health knowledge and biblical knowledge.

Our program started on Tuesday after a team member died and the funeral was on the monday. Imagine a power cut causing to oxygen compressor to switch off and your family member die! Horrible. I knew this was a possibility so borrowed a generator from town to use in case the power failed fortunately it did not but my colleague died what would have been preventable in England with ICU care.
The CHE training has gone well, we hope to follow up again in a few months time, with a second course.
The volunteers have been given tools to en vision and empower their community to bring change from within. Some struggled but many are going home really excited!

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Training in Family Planning and Community Health Evangelism

This week I'm undertaking a family planning course by Care international in partnership with USAID and the Ministry of Health next week we will be undertaking a Community Health Evangelism Training at OM's base in Mpulungu. The courses are similar but worlds apart.
We both training about 30 people with similar levels of literacy/illiteracy. If anything our volunteers will be of a lessor academic standard. The Family Planning has a budget of $6000 putting up the participants in a lodge, feeding them big tasty meals and paying them to attend.
Our course has a budget of $600 and contains missionaries, community health workers and church members who will sleeping in our classrooms, eating normal Zambian food and bringing a small contribution to the training be it $10 or a handful of fish.
This small charge may seem strange. But for community health workers and anyone attending a course in Zambia the expectation is that they will be paid to attend! If a nurse from the government goes on a vaccination campaigne in addition to their wages they receive enhancements and if they stay away from home for the night they receive $100per night plus the daily enhancements.
This is the battle we face.

The Family Planning course is of a very good quality and its in Bemba which is stretching my knowledge, but excitingly it is equipping community health workers(CHW's) to sell malaria nets, chlorine for clean water and monthly courses of the pill to enable women to space their children more effectively and condoms to help prevent the spread of HIV. These volunteers will be making a small profit from the sale of these products enabling them to push these products in the communities to bring change.

Our Community Health Evangelism Training is equipping the CHW's missionaries and church members to bring transformation and change from within their own communities without outside help vast amounts of money and by teaching christian values.

Please pray for those attending the course with me this week and for our CHE course next week with people starting off on friday to travel down the lake to Mpulungu.

Its really exciting, our clinic is running, were getting drugs from the government and training Community Health Evangelists. Moses from Chipwa and 2 of his disciples who have been building the clinic are coming for training as well as many others.

I will give another update next week! Blessings!
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Last month we saw 550 patients

Last month the medical work really started moving. We were using our fast pelican speed boat to do mobile clinics and for 2 trips where I was alone in the villages of Tongwa and Chipwa I used public boats.

Many malaria and respiratory infections and also skin diseases.
Next week I am undergoing family planning training and the week after we will be training 30 Community Health Evangelists. Please pray for the following weeks!
Excitingly I got to name my first baby in Chipwa village baby Joy was a short and uncomplicated delivery with very little bleeding! Lenie our midwife was back at our base so I did ask her a few questions over the phone with sporadic phone network which involved me climbing on a pigsty.
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Medical video online.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zur-TDrjt6E

Busy clinics,

A few weeks ago instead of working from the orphan school clinic I was in Tongwa one of the villages where we work doing clinics for 3 days. 65% of our patients had malaria, but I did not get a single mosquito bite or even see one.

We had lots of viral respiratory tract infections, which the government clinics always give antibiotics for. We however give paracetamol and multi vits, as many are malnourished, if clinically they need abx we give, but there is very poor understanding and patients will often then take the medications home or to a traditional doctor who will mix it with water and then inject.
I was woken up on my second night by friends who brought a baby I had seen the day before, I had prescribed abx and malaria medication, yet his parents had not given them to him. He was suffering from croup now, and his condition had deteriorated from when I saw him the previous morning.
The question why haven't you given your sick child the medication, shouts from within me! I'm not sure why, but much education is needed. I saw some horrendous cases of STD's and am sure HIV is rife in these communities. We have received a grant to buy a CD4 counter machine which will enable us to do HIV testing in the villages and also start people on Anti Retro Virals. Nicky our HIV specialist will go for training in SA in how to use is in may and then we hope to start testing.
We advise many to go for testing but few actually go. I had a young man at my house for 3 days as he went through HIV testing and counselling at the government clinic. 3 days for us in the western world it would take 20 minutes.

The government clinics are understaffed and overstretched people wait all day to be seen, and sometimes have to come back the next day and wait. Things are slowly improving in the town but in rural areas there are no medical staff just witch doctors.

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Let them see

At lake tanganyika a few years ago we were given thousands of second hand glasses and have run an eye ministry testing peoples eyes and giving them glasses for the past 2 years. It happened once a week and was not well organised. Since the start of january as a medical team we have sorted out an organised storage system and painstakingly entered the glasses prescriptions onto a computer system. The process now works very well and now 2 days a week Lewis runs the glasses clinic seeing upto 20 patients a day. The organisation of the glasses has enabled people to get the correct prescription and now demand has increased. Daily I have people coming to the clinic asking for glasses.
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