We started our day at World Hope this morning and awaited a meeting with the Holy Spirit Hospital. With some last minute preparations and thought, we gathered our belongings and piled into the car. This would be our first meeting with a hospital in Sierra Leone. We arrived at the hospital, where we were greeted […]
Day 2: Visiting PHUs + Interviews
To begin our day, we traveled out to the Panlap PHU with our driver William. As we drove through the market of Makeni, people were walking everywhere. The stores of Makeni were bustling with activity as William weaved through traffic. Once we had passed the market, the activity slowly waned as we approached the PHU. […]
Day 1: Arrival + Settling in
After a long flight, we landed in Freetown tired yet excited for the days to come. Once we obtained our visas and made our way through the rest of the airport, we met with Khanjan, Eric, and World Hope faculty. They helped us load our bags as we prepared to head into Makeni. As we […]
Day 18: The Finale
Today was our final work day in Makeni. We only had Makeni Regional Government scheduled for the day, so we were able to get some rest after our Freetown trip and begin our day at 10:30. We traveled to the hospital with Prof. Mehta and the AISHA team, since they were also doing a presentation […]
Days 16 + 17: SicklED Hits the Beach
Tuesday was a slow day for the team. Anticipating our beach trip on Wednesday, we wanted to tie off as many loose ends as possible while also preparing for our workshop at Makeni Regional Hospital on Thursday. Thus, most of Tuesday was spent updating our presentation and making sure our blogs were up to date. […]
Day 15: Monday at Masanga
In the morning, we started off by meeting with the medical research unit of Masanga, and we met two female researchers from Europe. One was a medical doctor from the Netherlands pursuing her PhD, who was currently in Africa to do fever-related research. The other woman was a medical student from Germany who was focusing […]
Day 14: An Early Start
The entirety of the SicklED team rose early this morning in order to make it to our first commitment. We were scheduled to attend a local outreach meeting that a nurse at a nearby PHU was conducting at a village a few minutes outside of Makeni. The nurse, who works at Yoni PHU, which the […]
Day 13: A Productive Morning at SHAFS
Today we had such an exciting meeting with SHAFS. We showed up a little early, and got to spend some time hanging out in the office with the director. Then, once everyone else arrived, we moved into this cool room that used to be a classroom. There were four or five SCD patients there as […]
Day 12: All Around Town
This morning, we started our day off with a trip to Makama Hospital. We had previously visited this facility to view antenatal care day, so because of our curiosity to learn more, we knew we had to come back for an opportunity to interview and talk with healthcare workers. That is exactly what we were […]
Days 10 + 11: Testing New Questions
Day 10 was more of an office day. The team needed to regroup and think through some of the collected data. Although the team has made some significant strides in building a network for dissemination of educational materials in Sierra Leone, there’s been a lack of clarity on what our specific research focus is. […]