Today we drove about an hour to Rokulla, a very rural area. Most of the roads there were not paved and therefore took us a lot longer to navigate all the bumps and ditches. Our drive William, however, is an excellent driver!
When we got there, we were greeted by the CHO and nurse in charge of the Community Health Post. Both spoke a good amount of English which made the conversation feel a lot more personable and well understood.
They took us to a room where 6 local CHWs and 1 peer supervisor were seated. All of them have been working since 2013 and had been trained for UTIs already by Gabi. They stated that their main challenges as a CHW are transportation/travel time, the referral process, having to make calls and care for people in the night and their stipends not being paid in full. Most stated that they are peasant farmers.
A super helpful insight to us was that stated that their community members will not pay for a UTI screening because they already get malaria and TB for free. They will not understand why they have to pay 1000 Leones for a cup of their urine. So in order for our business model to work in this this community, we need to focus our efforts on sensitization so people understand the importance of screening. The CHWs said that their villages are not educated and so most will not understand, and therefore not pay. Some of the CHWs felt uncomfortable with the idea because they don’t want to enforce a financial burden on their community members.
The common diseases that the CHWs come in contact with the most are Tuberculosis, elephantiasis, river blindness and gonorrhea. It was important for us to visit this CHP because of how different it was compared to the other places we went to. The needs of the CHWs, villages and community members are a lot different.
Charts and informational posters hanging in the clinic
Outside the clinic
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