Kristi Goes to Ghana

I’m Ghana be home soon!

Feb 25-28

Traveling!  I stayed in Tamale the 25th and caught an early flight to Accra on the 26th.  I am currently in Agape Guesthouse in Accra passing time until my international flight leaves tomorrow (27th) evening.  The guesthouse has wi-fi, so I am in heaven!  :)  I had a really wonderful time in Saboba and met so many kind and amazing people.   I saw more of Ghana than many Ghanians ever do, and I loved all of it!  It truly is a place of beauty and I hope I will be able to return.  In the meantime, I am hoping for safe and timely flights on my way home,and am excited to see family and friends! 

Feb 24

Today I went on an outreach!  I went with 2 nurses to the neighboring village of Sobiba. The purpose of this visit was to see how the 4 community volunteers are doing and observe them educating the people of the village and weighing the children, in addition to administering immunizations.  For the first portion, the community volunteers took turns teaching the people about diarrhea causes and treatment and proper nutrition/what to feed children of different ages.

After that, the weighing of children began.  A hanging scale was hung from the center of the small room we were in, and children were stripped naked and put in a cloth made to suspend them from the scale.  The cloth is basically a large pair of underpants with a long loop/strap attached to suspend the child.  Most women brought their own suspension cloths, in a variety of prints and colors!  After being weighed, the community volunteers record the weight in each child’s health record book and figure their weight percentile.  Then, the record books were passed along to the nurses and me and we looked to see if they were due for any immunizations or vitamin A.  Because vitamin A deficiency is a problem here, children receive supplements every 6 months starting at 6 months old and ending when they turn 5.

When the day began, there were only about 20-25 women present, but by 1230, we had seen around 100 children!  It was great for me to see all the children and get to play with and hold a few.  Most seem to like me, but a few are afraid of me because of my white skin.

After finishing up with the outreach, I headed over to the PHC to give my presentation.  All of the medical staff had been invited to my presentation, and many showed up!  I gave a brief presentation on the importance of patient education and then taught them how to sterilize water using plastic bottles and the sun!  Dr. Jean had mentioned this in a meeting my first week here, and I was so interested!  There is a website, SODIS, with information, instructions and research on how you can sterilize water without chemicals or boiling.  This is great for people in Ghana, especially those in small villages without access to wood or charcoal for fires.  Everyone seemed really receptive and had a lot of questions about the process.  My hope is that nurses on the wards can teach patients, especially those transmitted by dirty water, how to sterilize their water with this method.  I had also talked with Joshua about this, and he is going to incorporate it into the outreach trips to the villages!  This could make such a big impact on the lives and health of people in Ghana. There are some setbacks to the method, such as access to clear bottles, and the fact that bottles must be less than 3 liters, but hopefully they won’t deter people from utilizing this method.

My hope is to keep in touch with Joshua to follow up on how he feels the project is going.  Then, if I come back to Ghana, I can visit and see first hand how often it is utilized and how successful it is.  If all goes well, maybe the Italian-Ghanian Project can incorporate this into their outreaches as well!  I wish I had given the presentation at the beginning of my stay, so that I could have seen it put in action and be available to help answer questions and educate more staff how to teach the method.