Sudan - Visit to a Community Health Volunteer |
|||
 |
|||
« Previous |
Next » |
March 7th, 2007 - 12:19PM |
|
|
|||
 |
|
Photo: Emmanuel d'Harcourt/The IRC When we visit a community distributor, we want to know whether they keep good records relating to all of the children they see and the drug storage and stock they have. We also randomly try to visit one of the children they have seen. We want to find out if the child is under five years old. We want to see if the child’s mother received and understood the instructions for the drugs, and whether the mother followed the instructions. Finally we want to see if the community is happy with the community distributor’s services. We went to the home of Angelina Nyabien, the community distributor for Pabuoyi village in Pachak. When we arrived, she was milking the cows and asked us to wait for her to finish. We did. Afterwards she invited us into her Tukul (a traditional hut). She was delighted to see us. We found out that Angelina kept the medicine box in a separate house from where she cooks. She locks the box up to prevent children from getting access to the medicine. She opened the box and showed us the Zinc tablets, ORS sachets, Amoxicillin tablets and ACT tablets. The physical count showed she had enough stock to last a month. She also showed us a timer, used to count respiratory rates, in good working condition, a pair of scissors and the patient and drug registers. She had seen three patients whose names were well-marked in the clean patient and the drug registers. Angelina’s records showed she gave the correct dosages as per age. During a visit like this, we randomly select one patient from the list that a community distributor has seen and recorded. We selected a 2-year-old-girl, who was brought to the community distributor on December 27, 2006. The child’s symptoms included a fever and coughing. After making an assessment, Angelina started the child on two ACT tablets daily for three days for malaria. She counted the child’s breath using a respiratory timer and started the child on Amoxicillin tablets for pneumonia, advising the mother to give her the tablets three times daily for five days. The mother understood the instructions and advice Angelina gave. The mother said the child had improved greatly and that she was very happy with what Angelina is doing in the area and the community based treatment program. The mother said that in the past mothers would get confused when a child fell sick, but today things are better since common diseases affecting children are dealt with early. We left Pachak satisfied with our visit and assessment of the community-based treatment programs. Posted By: Wynne Boelt | Africa, Children & Youth, Health Permalink |
