Today, all three health teams traveled together to a Community health center (CHC) and a Community Health Post (CHP) located approximately 20 minutes away. Again, with 12 people in the back seat, we ventured over the pot hole covered road.
Our first stop was at Masangpo CHC. The CHO there, Alhaji, had been working at this center for 9 months, but has 2 years of experience. Throughout his entire time working as a CHO, he believes he has only seen one person who possibly had sickle cell. They were 22 years old and were diagnosed from family history and persistent joint pain. She was treated with fluids, pain medicine, and folic acid. He then stated that in his catchment (the villages the clinic serves) they have no patients with sickle cell.
Side Note: We have been getting a lot of the same answers at the clinics we have visited. CHOs have either never had a patient with sickle cell, or their patients with sickle cell are almost always adults. When we were with Dr. Jaja, he stated a very somber by true statement, that children with sickle cell have a 50-90% chance of dying before the age of 5. A majority of the time, the child does not die from sickle cell; instead, the child dies from a different disease, like malaria, because sickle cell drastically lowers theirs immune system. Because of this, children pass before anyone can realized they have sickle cell. This is one of the reasons we think CHOs may believe their catchments do not contain patients with sickle cell.
In addition to interviewing the CHO, we also got to spend some time exploring the clinic. During this time, the safe motherhood team was interviewing a few of the pregnant mothers that were there for one of their ANC visits (which was really cute because the local children all stood behind the camera helping them film). Jannah also bought a few of the local snacks that we have been seeing people carry around on their heads. One of the snacks tasted like a cold hard hash brown in ball form, and another was a cake-like pastry. She got ripped off by paying $0.50 each for the snacks (they were supposed to be 10 cents each), but its okay because the kids were really happy.
The next clinic we visited was a CHP (community health post). The CHO and CHWs were not at the post when we went to visit, but Abibatu, the MCH (maternal and child health) aid, who has 5 years of experience in her field, was there. Like most other clinics the RDT and HIV/AIDS tests were available. They also had a syphilis test. She expressed a need for a UTI test that Ukweli was glad to hear. She said the main diseases/conditions they treat are ARI (acute respiratory infection), malaria, and diarrhea. When asked, she did not know of anyone possibly having sickle cell.
After the interview we headed back to World Hope, debriefed, planned for future days, and played with the World Hope puppy, Lucky (Click here to see a video: Lucky the Puppy)