This post is a long-time coming. I know I told many of you to stay tuned for this blog. I have finally gotten around to doing it. I’m already over halfway through my trip, which is 4 weeks long. In this post, I’ll focus on what I am doing here in Uganda.
I will begin with some important background information. The organization I am working with is called OmniMed (http://omnimed.org/). They are a non-profit organization based out of a small town called “Kisoga”, which is about 2 hours outside the capital city of Kampala. OmniMed was founded in 1998 by Dr. Edward O’Neil. The organization has worked in 5 different countries worldwide and is currently focused on Uganda. As an organization, OmniMed works alongside the Minister of Public Health in Uganda to help provide many community oriented interventions. The primary mode of the work OmniMed does is through Village Health Teams (VHTs). These VHTs volunteer as the public health leader in their village. Their responsibilities include educating their local community in areas such as sanitation, pediatric illnesses and malaria prevention. They advocate preventing diseases and seeking care early, when appropriate. Many of the villages these VHTs come from are very poor, with low levels of education. Over one third of the Uganda population lives on less than one dollar per day. The VHTs become the first line of defense in preventing many communicable diseases, such as malaria, pneumonia and diarrheal illnesses. OmniMed’s role is to train and maintain the VHTs. So far, there have been over 1,200 VHTs trained, serving many thousands of Ugandans in their local communities. In addition, OmniMed facilitates the construction of home cookstoves with materials easily found the local area for free. These cookstoves help prevent pediatric pneumonia as it drastically reduces the amount of smoke produced while cooking. Omnimed also helps communities construct water sources. The majority of rural Uganda lacks running water. Therefore, they rely on such water sources for drinking, bathing and washing clothes. Water source construction enables access to clean water, which helps prevent the number of diarrheal diseases in the community. These water sources are constructed in such a way to require minimal cost and maintenance. Each of these outreaches is overseen by OmniMed, but their role is advisory only. It is up to local communities and VHTs to put them into practice. The idea is to have a sustainable impact with community investment. All of this is well and good, but these ideas and practices need measurable impact to determine the effectiveness and improve as needed. One of the biggest flaws in global health is the lack of evidence based studies of interventions. Many ideas sound good and look great on paper. When they are examined closely, do they actually benefit the communities they try and help? OmniMed seeks to ask the difficult questions and is working on conducting randomized control trials to determine the effectiveness of the practices put into place. Specific areas of research currently being conducted are: 1) Cookstoves for the prevention of pediatric pneumonia 2) Insecticide Treated Nets in prevention of Malaria and 3) Protected Water Source construction in the prevention of diarrheal illnesses. All three areas are points of emphasis with the VHTs, making them the glue that holds these interventions together and imploring their villages to put them into practice. After this detailed overview, where do I fit into all of this? My primary purpose for being in Uganda is personal education. I’ve read many books on global development and health and this trip enables me to better grasp many of the problems faced in developing nations. Secondarily, I am collecting data from VHTs and writing a report that will be used in the research, helping to answer questions of efficacy. This includes talking with the VHTs to understand what specific issues they face in their respective villages. I am also involved in teaching classes to VHTs regarding the basics of several infectious diseases that are most prevalent in their communities. In my next post I will reflect on what I have learned and seen so far. Hopefully, that post will be out within the next week.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |