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July 18, 2007

In Pujehun: Closer to the Village

There are a few places that you can travel to in a filled low car without incidences within Sierra Leone, especially not to Pujehun. As my dad - our driver - circumvented all the potholes he stopped abruptly with a frightened face. I got out of the car and as imagined, we had a deflated tire. To stress the wrong timing, we had a scheduled meeting with the Health Team at 12pm and we experienced the breakdown at around 11:45 with a substantial distance to go. It took us a while to change the spare tire and by the end of the situation we were all very dirty from the dusty road.

We were an hour late and as we approached the hospital in Pujehun, we passed the doctor on the way but he promised to join us later. We went ahead with the meeting as the other members of the team were patiently waiting for us. After apologizing to them we began the long detailed meeting. At the end, we decided that the Insecticide Treated Nets ITNs were to be taken to Sahn Malen the next day. We paid for the transportation costs and arranged for the doctor and his team to join us at the general town meeting.

We also arranged for the ITNs to be increased to 1,500. The population of Sahn Malen had been grossly underestimated. We had a pre-project survey that was carried out by a team of ours. We had initially thought that there were about 700 people in the town but with that number doubled, we had to reorganized most of what our methodology was. It all went well as we secured more ITNs and the varying figure was not as bad as it could have been. We had an agreement with the DHMT about how the process was going to work and we were on our way again to Sahn Malen. The road was totally bad and the 12-mile journey took us about an hour.

Most importantly, we decided with the DHMT that we should have this project be an independent study that will be divided into 3 parts. We will monitor the malaria morbidity for three years and see how total coverage will affect various factors like prevalence and mortality. The team will continue to organize a post project survey and the various important statistics compiled. The DHMT will have a random blood sampling to set the baseline of malaria prevalence, which will then be used for comparative purposes. They will also hold meetings once a month to sensitize people on malaria and to ensure that everyone was using the nets in the right way.