Health Update - Expanded Outreaches and More

MWCT's Health Program has had a busy month on many fronts: strengthening our relationship with Kenya's Ministry of Health, showing health education videos on various topics, and expanding our community outreaches on Kuku Group Ranch to include new villages.  Throughout the year we plan to continue to strengthen our relationships with other organizations and maximize our ability to help the Maasai of Kuku.

Lena dispenses de-worming tablets to the children of Samai village.

To facilitate a better working relationship and keep an open channel of communication, Lena had a discussion with Dr. Kapkoni, from the District Ministry of Health, regarding some reflect community conflict with health professionals on the ranch.  Following the meeting we drafted a memorandum of understanding to be ratified by the area's community health committees, which will help to define the relationships and responsibilities of all groups in the complex system and ensure we can maximize our positive impact.

Sam assesses a patient during MWCT's Samai outreach.

We held two recent community outreaches to Kuku village, as well as our initial outreach to a small village nearby called Samai.  We noted during our first visit to Kuku last month that attendance had been steadily rising, and realized many patients here coming several kilometers from Samai to attend.  Therefore, during our next outreach day we spent the morning in Samai, then the afternoon in Kuku village -- and acheived a record turnout!

Lena records patient visits during our Kuku village outreach.

During the outreaches we immunized more than 50 infants, provided antenatal care to several pregnant women, distributed de-worming tablets to children at nearby schools in each village, showed videos on proper nutrition for children, mothers, and all community members, and assessed any other patient complaints.

Steve weighing a Maasai child at the Samai outreach.

Our Community Health Workers were instrumental in these outreaches, organizing and publicizing them as well as helping the day of, translating videos from Swahili to Maa (the Maasai language), and doing anything else that was asked of them.  Without their continued enthusiasm and support, we couldn't achieve nearly what we have thus far.

TeachAIDS Blogs About MWCT - Again!

More news from MWCT's Health Program coming soon, but first some more exciting news about expanding news of our efforts!  TeachAIDS, the fantastic organization who first blogged about collaborating with MWCT back in November, has written another blog post about our efforts and how we've been utilizing their materials to improve our Health outreaches and more effectively communicate health concepts to the Maasai.

Schoolchildren watch a TeachAIDS video and participate in a workshop made possible by the program.

TeachAIDS has developed a set of interactive and media-rich teaching applications to educate about the risks of HIV and AIDS.  However, what sets them apart from other organizations is that they produce these materials in Swahili, allowing us to communicate better with the large numbers of Maasai who speak much better Swahili than English.

In their latest blog post, TeachAIDS describes MWCT's use of its materials, and focuses on our work with girls and young women.  As our Health Program Co-Director Lena says, "The room was silent during the viewing as the girls were fully engaged with the TeachAIDS educational program [...] We are so thankful to the TeachAIDS team for developing these life-saving tools for our communities."

http://teachaids.org/blog/teachaids-empowers-girls-in-rural-kenya

TeachAIDS Blogs About MWCT!

Exciting news on the publicity front for MWCT's Health Program - we're being featured and blogged about on TeachAIDS' website!  TeachAIDS is a fantastic organization we're proud to partner with; they are an interdisciplinary team of researchers in many fields working together to develop interactive and rich-media applications to promote the prevention of HIV/AIDS.  But what makes them even more special is that they produce these materials specifically to overcome social and cultural barriers - in MWCT's case, all other available materials are in English, but TeachAIDS' are in Swahili!

An HIV education presentation in a local village using TeachAIDS materials.

You can read more about our collaboration and the success we had this summer combining the educational materials with a community soccer tournament in TeachAIDS' blog post here:

http://teachaids.org/blog/sports-and-hiv-education-in-rural-kenya

Stay tuned for more updates on this wonderful organization we're proud to partner with, our ongoing use of these education materials, and the other great stuff currently going on with the Health Program!