Akosobo Dam

Submitted by Hallie Paige Arrigon

To celebrate the Ghanaian holiday on Friday, I ventured off the airfield to tour the dam at Akosombo. The dam was constructed during the 1960s to generate electricity for rural communities across the region. Lake Volta, the world’s largest artificial lake, formed as a result of this intervention in natural processes. Electricity from the dam certainly has a positive impact on the health and safety of some individuals and communities who have gained access to refrigeration, electric lighting, and similar luxuries. However, many of the communities that are situated along Lake Volta and served by MoM remain without electricity and have instead suffered health threats imposed by the dam. Transforming an active river into a massive lake created the perfect environment for the snails that carry the schistosomiasis parasite. Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia) can cause many unpleasant symptoms like blood in the urine and stool as well as a variety of long-term consequences, including impaired growth and development in children and infertility and cervical cancer in women. The disease remains alarmingly prevalent around Lake Volta. For this reason, MoM recently distributed health education materials targeting schistosomiasis to the communities participating in the ETCHE Project and remains active in the Bilharzia Control Forum Implementation Committee.

BCFIC

Submitted by Michaela Sholes

Medicine on the Move continues to support the efforts of the BCFIC in Ghana and look forward to playing an active role in Schistosomiasis control across the country. Held at the University of Ghana (Legon), the meeting was in follow-up to the conference back in March which gathered stakeholders (including MoM) to address the issue of Schistosomiasis in Ghana, particularly along the Lake Volta shorelines. Those present at the meeting discussed what action items were to come from the information gathered at the conference and helped clarify the various needs and roles for what lies ahead. We look forward to the challenges ahead and are pleased to play our part in the good things going on in Ghana

Working together for disease prevention

Submitted by Michaela Sholes
MoM, AvTech, and WAASPS really do have a great bunch of folks here. We're all very different, have our individual quirks, but at the end of the day, we come together and make it all work, even when the assignment is something less than delightful! Ben and I have been preparing the next round of information packets for the upcoming bag drop later this week and needed the AvTech girls to help finish it! One of the things we do in each packet is to include a MoM-developed poster with images we've taken on various health topics, and this week was Schistosomiasis (try to say THAT 3 times fast!). Patricia and Lydia helped model correct preparation of the SODIS method of water disinfection, such as cleaning the bottles, filtering them of debris, and shaking them for 20 seconds. Even though the girls were on holiday, they pitched in with a great spirit to help us take some Schistosomiasis-related photos. I'm sure they were mortified that onlookers were staring as we took pictures of human waste just a short distance from the lake's edge (one of the ways Schisto is transmitted is when infected waste gets into a water source where the snails live), but they were good sports! They modeled good behaviors to help prevent the disease and I think we're going to have great posters thanks to their help!

Health Education Drops

Medicine on the Move is pleased to announce that further to many years of development and testing, we are now approved by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority to implement the Bag- and Bottle-Drop health and related education systems as part of ETCHE (Encouragement Training for Community Health Empowerment) and its part in the INSCI (Integrated National Schistosomiasis Control Initiative) through our extensive collaboration with WAASPS. Using the Zenith CH701 aircraft with its built in Ghana airframe, equipped with the reliable Austrian made Rotax 912 UL 80Hp engine, we will commence outreach activities using innovative in-country developed techniques in the next ten days, weather permitting.

This has been announced this morning at the First National Schistosomiasis Forum, held at Akosombo, Ghana in front of an international audience comprising of parasitologist and leaders of health and related programmes in Ghana and West Africa, and will permit accelerated access to many, otherwise inaccessible, communities. The WAASPS/MoM developed delivery system, via the specially adapted CH701, will be an essential tool in the forthcoming campaign against the second most socio-economically devastating parasitic disease in Sub-Saharan Africa. With over ten thousand kilometres of potentially infected water frontages, and an estimated fiteen million cases per year in Ghana, MoM sees the attack on Schisto as an integral part of the ETCHE programme.

This approval comes at the end of an eighteen year vision of using light aviation to reach the rural folks of Ghana in some very hard to get to places, many of which have never before had attention focused on them and their challenges - let alone contact made, support and encouragement provided. Through the MoM projects and its partners in WAASPS and the AvTech Academy, young Ghanaian women, from the rural areas, have trained hard and are now ready to make this a reality. The vision of West African reaching West African to bring about change for greater Community Health Empowerment and socio-economic sustainability is about to take to the skies.

Demonstrations of the drop methodology will be made by Patricia Mawuli Nyekodzi and Lydia Wetsi to delegates and invited guests tomorrow, Friday 16th March at Kpong Airfield.

Medicine on the Move is a registered Charity in England and Wales, recognised in Ghana by the Department of Social Welfare as an NGO, our 501c3 status in the USA is pending (we are currently accepting US donations through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation).

For more details please contact us at info@medicineonthemove.org

National Shistosomiasis Forum

Submitted By Michaela Sholes

Look what Ben and I spotted while we were running errands in Akosombo!  This billboard is right in front of the big VRA hospital as you come into town, so you can't help but notice it.  As an incidental, anyone care to guess who's name is on the billboard, second to the right?  I'll give you a hint...it's not DaD!

 
We will keep you all posted as we gear up for the conference on Thursday!  Jonathan is one of the speakers and will be introducing the use of lightweight aircraft in the fight against Schistosomiasis.  We are excited to be joining many dedicated global and Ghanaian leaders in health and development as we  combine our knowledge and efforts to make a difference here in Ghana.  Let's come together and knock those NTD's off one bug at a time, shall we?  Go Team MoM!

Health report

Submitted by Michaela Sholes

I wish I could love statistics…I really do. I see the practicality in them and I understand how useful they are for telling us things about the work that we did…but quite frankly, math and I just aren’t friends. I’m a people person, I like talking to people, I like brain-storming with them to find viable solutions to whatever their frustration/challenge is…and I understand the numbers well enough to get the gist of what they’re telling me…but yeah, you get the idea.

So…all that griping just to say…the last few weeks have been spent reaching back to my Stats classes at UAB to try to remember how to run the data that we collected while on the Yapei Queen so that we can make heads and tails of all that talking I..I mean they…did. Anyway, after much ado and more than a few cups of coffee…the results are in!

For the sake of simplicity, I’ve only included in this blog the highlights of some of the comparisons we did. However, if you’re interested in the full report, just email me and I will be glad to share!

General Demographics:

• Both men and women were likely to speak at least 2 languages (90%). The primary languages spoken were Ewe and Konkomba. None of the female Ghanaians spoke English.
• Women were slightly less likely (75%) to be illiterate than men (83%). 
• Women are more likely to travel on a regular basis: 64% travel 3-5 times/month. In contrast, 71% of men only travel once a month or less. (Bear in mind, this is specific to travel on the ferry)
• The fares reported by passengers were much more irregular for women, than for men, regardless of destination or ticket type.

Health Section:

• 100% of the women reported visited some type of health facility in the past 6 months. 83% reported visiting a clinic or hospital. In contrast, 50% of the men failed to have a consult at any type of health facility in the same time period. Only 50% of those who reported a consult did so at a clinic or hospital, meaning that the remaining 50% consulted a traditional healer or herbalist. 
• Although 61% of passengers were aware of Bilharzia by description (blood in urine/stool), less than 10% of all interviewed knew it by any local or medical term.
• None of the participants knew how to correctly treat Bilharzia, despite one third of participants reportedly knowing someone with the disease and one participant who reported having it at the time of the interview.
• 42% of the women reported utilizing the lake as a source for drinking, cooking or bathing.

Despite my dislike of fiddling with numbers, the results we got were actually rather eye-opening and I have a great respect for the power of a good database. Our population sample was just a small portion of all the people who live and travel on the lake, but the information is still highly useful in giving us a direction as we plan ahead. One of the things we are exploring, based on these results, is finding a way to provide health education posters and flyers for the various vessels traveling all across Lake Volta. We’d love to hear from our readers if you have any additional suggestions or thoughts! Stay tuned!

Plastering.... we're so close to finishing the mini clinic/education unit

Since getting the roof on to B3/4 we have been a little (OK a lot) cash strapped.... but with some creative thinking and financial juggling (we have a lot of balls up in the air!), we are making progress on the plastering... Right now we will struggle to complete the buildings in the planned time frame, mainly since the weather has kept all the aircraft at Kpong on the ground, and consequently our main sponsor WAASPS are exceptionally cash flow reduced... but when has that stopped us in the past?  I remember a meeting with a donor organisation once who, after agreeing with all of our projects and concepts, being remarkably excited by it all, told me straight up 'We are not going to give you any grants or financial support'.  Amazed, (and a little angry too) I asked 'Why?'  - the response amazed me even more 'Because we know you, and you will always find a way - you will work to make it happen.  We give grants to people who arn't able to work around problems like you do.'   To me, rightly or wrongly, it is smarter to back the ones who are ready to make it happen - and have the courage and determination to push on to the very end.... but then I am biased....

Sadly, time and time again we see financial support given to projects that never see the light of day, of get half-built, half (at best) conceptualised, never reaching the target audience - not making progress towards their end goal.  One thing we know how to do at Kpong is how to make every cent of every dollar work hard  - and how to change lives, one flight at a time.... working through the little details, making this a sustainable long term operation.... even if it takes a little longer through lack of financial support, we have enough enthusiasm and passion to work past the seemingly impossible - we have done it in the past and will continue to do so.... with your help....

Hit the ground Running!!!

Ben and Michaela made the monthly supply run of Pasta to the Queen Mothers and participated in the INSCI planning meeting for the March 15th, 1st Schistosomiasis Forum, which our Queen Mother's are an integral key to its implementation! (Ben managed to balance some Pasta on his head - he needs more practice to walk like that!)