The internet has been down for over a week so I have not been able to update my blog. Africa is a challenging environment to work in and recently three of our laptops have completely crashed and seem to be infected with a virus. My laptop crashes weekly and appears to a have a faulty hard drive. Maybe it's all the dust or the humidity or who knows.
I took a picture of how my desk looks on a typical work day- laptop, internet cable, backpack, bottle of Gatorade, some vaccine stuff. The door to our office has a nice sign so I hope that more GSK volunteers are coming to continue our efforts.
Day 25 of the chicken project. Here I am teaching John and Rael how to use a syringe and needle to prepare the Newcastle disease vaccine eye drops. They enjoy learning new skills and seem to be taking pride in their work- look at the white lab coats!
After practicing several times with me they made it for real. Then the chicks were gathered together onto one side of the brooder. Next each chick was picked up with one drop carefully put into their eye. At the end they were released on the other side of the wood barrier. John and Rael worked methodically and I am confident they will be able to handle everything by the time I leave Kenya. The chickens have outgrown the brooder and now occupy the entire coop. At the rate they are eating I believe they will reach market weight in less than six weeks. Most of their fuzz is being replaced by white feathers and their combs are starting to appear.
Last week some of our GSK colleagues volunteering in South Africa dropped by to observe our work. From the bottom of the photo seated on the right: Dr. Hezron Mc'Obewa, Executive Director, OGRA Foundation; Dr. Mike Marks, Global Medical Director, Direct Relief International; Matt and Katrina our visiting GSK colleagues from the UK.
This week we visited the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) campus near Kisumu. We met with Dr. DJ Perkins from the University of New Mexico, who is studying pediatric malaria and HIV here in Africa. He is based in the USA but visits here several times a year to manage his research. Our first collaborative project is to open a pediatric malaria trial in our rural village clinic. This offers our patients a chance to receive free medical care and the latest treatments for malaria. In the current study we are giving two commonly used malaria drugs to see which one is superior. Until now, these drugs have never been tested head to head against each other so this kind of knowledge is lacking. DJ is also interested in sickle cell research and I know a hematologist at UCLA who is working on a new treatment that might be able to help him. It would be amazing if I could make this connection happen.
The next few pictures were taken at the Siaya District Hospital where the CDC, the University of New Mexico and KEMRI have already established a research program. We looked at how they do things and the informatics system they use so we can put a similar program in use at our little clinic. I thought it was odd to have a price list for medical procedures but maybe we will see something similar in the USA since the passage of the healthcare bill. (Note: 75 shillings = one US dollar). Doctor visits are free but an enema is about 67 cents!!!
On our way back to the office we saw a sign with President Obama's name on it. This sign marks the dirt road that lead to his grandmother's house in Kenya. We wanted to visit it and take a picture but it would have required a long detour. Maybe next time.
We crossed the equator at one point during our drive so we pulled off the road to snap a few pictures. I am straddling the equator and have one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern hemisphere. There was nothing marked on the monument or on the ground to indicate which direction was North so I had to pull out a small compass that my brother gave me to get oriented. I expected to see a white dotted line painted across the earth!
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