The rain had delayed Hassan’s return back to WHI

Grace and Noah focused on formal documentation of Ukweli’ strategies, team members’ roles and responsibilities, and forming a communications log. They went to the World Hope Office and stayed there most of the day. The potential Ukweli strategies going forward included the positives and negatives of each route, as well as the possible outcomes of each strategy. Additionally, they created a new set of questions to ask at PHUs in order to gather more information about the practices of payment for health services within Sierra Leone– although services such as maternal healthcare and care for children under the age of 5 is guaranteed to be free within this country, the reality is that the service itself may be free but the cost of materials isn’t. For example, a clinic may perform a screening service for free, but the device used may need to be paid for in order to perform that service. The communications log was formed to allow the Ukweli-Lehigh team and World Hope International team the ability to view all Ukweli-related communications between the Ukweli-Lehigh team and Distribution Managers within one document– this is necessary to provide oversight and accountability within the venture’s operations.

The Distribution Manager, Hassan, met the team at WHI this morning and we instructed him that today was a sales day for him. So, he set out to go sell boxes of test strips and to engage with PHUs in general. When he arrived back, he discussed that each of the PHUs he visited were agreeable to buying Ukweli test strip boxes, but he will have to revisit them within the next few days to conduct Ukweli training with more nurses and community health workers (CHWs) upon his return.

Samara and Matt traveled to Garden City Hospital with Nurses Janet and Miata. As before, Janet conducted the pre-screening counseling while Miata performed the screening procedure as well as the post-screening counseling. While waiting for patients to arrive, Miata also introduced Samara and Matt to the head doctor of the hospital. Afterwards, Samara observed seven patients being screened and Matt sat in on the pre-screening counseling. The team then returned to the World Hope office where they met with Edwin to discuss his opinions on the interview questions. He expressed his concerns about some wording and perception issues– the team edited the questions accordingly. The Ukweli-Lehigh team hopes that the interviewing will be able to begin next week.