Health Update - New Village Outreach Program!

Sam giving a talk on cervical cancer during an Oltiasika outreach.

MWCT's Health Program has stayed busy since we last posted -- lots of exciting work going on all over Kuku Group Ranch!  In the months after the rainy season we've made great progress with our village outreaches, having successful ones each month and starting a new 3-day outreach program in which our nurse Sam and lab technician Felix spend 3 days each month at our 2 primary clinics around Kuku Group Ranch that don't have regular MWCT staffing.

Sam explains a self-breast exam to women in Oltiasika while government nurse Peter demonstrates.

During their 3 days at each clinic they provide cancer screenings for women in the area, family planning sessions, immunizations for children, lab work and testing, and shorter outreaches to smaller surrounding villages with no health facilities at all.  They also give talks to the community on the importance of testing, hygiene, deworming for children, and many other topics.  Finally, they work with the local Community Health Workers to ensure the care provided during the rest of the month is as good as possible.

Sam and Felix with Olorika Community Health Worker Daniel.

We initiated this program in June by sending Sam and Felix to both Olorika and Oltiasika for 3 days each; it was very well received by the communities.  In addition to performing operations and testing, Sam made a point to teach the government nurses how to perform the tasks and they did very well.

Olorika CHW Daniel checking in on the chickens.

In Olorika we also helped with the Community Health Workers' income-generating project, raising chickens.  The money generated by selling the chickens will help purchase small supplies to allow the CHWs to be as useful as possible. Every day we're working to make MWCT more useful to the surrounding Maasai community!

Health Update - Outreaches and Visitors!

It's been a good month for the Health Program, with continued outreaches and education about the aims of our program aimed at helping the Maasai community understand how the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust functions and the different services available through our programs.

Lena and Sam prepare to see patients during a recent Health outreach.

We've also been thrilled to host a very important visitor for two weeks -- MWCT Development Coordinator  Kira Seibert was visiting from the United States!  As our lead publicity and development coordinator in America, this visit allowed her to get a much more personal, in-depth understanding of the aims and activities of the Trust.  After three weeks of Health outreaches, safaris, hikes in the Chyulus, meetings with Community Rangers, and much more she didn't even want to leave!

Kira seeing the Conservation Program's work close at hand.

This month in Oltiasika we also practiced some new techniques aimed at maximizing our impact in the short time we have available in each small community.  In addition to the regular seeing of patients by Sam and Felix, Lena spoke with Maasai about the importance of family planning  options and techniques while they were standing in line.  Furthermore, we're developing a plan to expand our Health outreach program by rotating our nurses around to the various dispensaries for a few days at a time, rather than just one or two days per month.  All of these improvements are designed to use MWCT's resources in more effective and efficient ways.

A child is examined during on of MWCT's Health outreaches.

Health Update - Cancer Screenings

MWCT's Health Program recently hired a new Clinical Officer for Langata village named Emmanuel Wanyama, allowing us to greatly expand our services and keep the clinic open on weekends.  Since his arrival clinic visits have increased more than 30%, allowing us to help many more patients.  Thanks to this new flexibility, we recently offered cancer screenings in Langata for the first time to good success.

The district reproductive health officer discusses cancer screenings.

The District Reproductive Health Officer began the day by facilitating a community conservation about women's cancers, after which Sam (MWCT nurse) and Wanyama worked with the Ministry nurse to administer breast and cervical cancer screenings.  During this initial visit ten women were screened with no referrals, and the community was very thankful for this new service.

Women wait for cancer screenings in Kuku village.

Following this we held a second screening two weeks later in Kuku village, this time using our experience to plan more comprehensively for the event.  We brought our ambulance fully outfitted for the day, with supplies including a hospital bed and disinfecting bucket, and set up operations in the local Child Care Fund center.

Sam and the female government explain basic facts about types of cancer.

Because some women are uncomfortable with a male nurse performing the screenings, we arranged for a female government nurse from Loitokitok to accompany us and help for the day.  We again had a community discussion regarding cancers, then screened ten women for breast and cervical cancer, one of whom was referred for further testing.

MWCT ambulance loaded with supplies for our Kuku village screening.