Invasive Procedures

After observing the flurry activities that occur in the local health clinic, I have come to truly admire both the quantity and quality of the work being done by the staff.  They have a population of 2,500 people living in the district to keep healthy with a staff of 8.  Their prevention programs and efforts to address chronic problems are admirable, and include: malnutrition, parasites, respiratory illnesses, anemia, healthy pregnancy, early childhood development, HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancy, and much more.

To give you an idea of what they are dealing with, I’ll give you an example of a recent event I witnessed during a survey of a nearby community.  We are currently in the process of gathering data on households with children under 3 years.  The health promoters are literally going door-to-door asking mothers intrusive questions about things such as:

       What type of food are you feeding your children? 

       Are you washing your hands before preparing food?

       Do you know what to do if your child gets severe diarrhea?  

       Do you know how to play games with your child to stimulate brain activity?

The health promoters are collecting essential information that will be used to decide what kind of project will be done to help improve the health of the community -- and which families will receive the benefits of that project.

So, this week I tagged along with one of the health promoters on a house visit and she got to the part of the questionnaire that asked “What can you do to reduce the frequency of respiratory illnesses that your children get?”  

As the health promoter is reading the question to the mother, I look over a the 6 year-old girl who has a hacking cough like she’s a pack-a-day smoker, and then over at two huge cauldrons with boiling liquid sitting over a smoking campfire.  She’s cooking moonshine (“chicha”), which she probably does several times a week to sell (as a side business), creating volumes of clouds of smoke for her children to breathe.  The mother looks puzzled, and responds “Umm...wash my hands?”  Well, at least she picked up on the handwashing message!