At Grounds for Health, we recently developed a new community health promoter (CHP) training curriculum that we will be implementing for future health promoter trainings. It includes simple text and user-friendly, descriptive images that health promoters can use as a job aid when sharing life-saving information with their peers.
In early January 2012, I joined In-country Program Coordinator Annah Kichambati, MD to work with her in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. Here Grounds for Health has begun a new partnership with Kili Cafe and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to establish a cervical cancer prevention program. During a four-day training of 15 new health promoters, we field-tested Grounds for Health’s new curriculum for the first time. Once the materials are completed, they will be translated into both Swahili and Spanish to use at all of our current sites as we train new promoters.
The promoters-in-training were eager participants, singing and clapping intermittently as they interacted with the material and information, Grounds for Health staff, and each other. Dr. Annah’s morning ‘quizzes’ tested their knowledge each morning and their responses demonstrated that they had mastered the information shared each day. The troop of new community health promoters ended the week with big smiles and enthusiasm to share what they’d learned among their village members.
Two weeks after the initial training, the health promoters gathered again for a pre-campaign meeting. They met with Dr. Annah and were also greeted by Ellen Starr and Rebecca Singer who are in Tanzania for the training of doctors and nurses and community screening campaign. The promoters were extremely successful in their first recruitment. More than 480 women had registered for the community screening campaign.
Clearly, the initial enthusiasm of the newly certified community health promoters has translated into effective messaging and community mobilization. Grounds for Health trainers and the local doctors and nurses will be very busy over the coming days of the clinical training and community screening campaign!
Amanda in action with a community member
Getting to know one another is an important part of building trust
Annah quizzing her eager pupils
An exercise on clear, effective communication ... remember playing 'telephone' as a child? it's still fun as an adult!
Here’s yet another Kigoma success story: We recently learned that three of our star pupils from Kigoma—Grencia, Leonarda and Bernadetta—have become National Trainers and just finished their second cervical cancer training campaign in Pwani, Tanzania, a region that has had no cervical cancer prevention programs until now. They trained 12 providers for six sites: the Regional Hospital, four district hospitals and a large health center.
The three of them also held training sessions for an NGO called IMA in Mara Region and recently Leonarda trained for EGPAF in Tabora. They are now popular trainers.
Further proof that Grounds for Health is having a real, tangible impact.
Leonarda with her GFH certificate, June 2009
Bernadetta receiving her certificate from master trainer Dr. Cheryl Gibson, January 2010
Grencia and GFH volunteer Susan Hollinger
Click on the Markers to see region names or view Training Sites in a larger map.
On Friday October 21, Executive Director August Burns and Senior Clinical Officer Ellen Starr departed for the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. They are currently in the process of meeting with the Association of Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffee Growers (Kilicafe), the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the Tanzania Ministry of Health to finalize plans for launching our new program in this region in January 2012.
Grounds for Health field staff Dr. Annah Kichambati has been in Moshi for a few weeks, making connections in advance of our arrival. Over the coming days, Ellen and August plan to spend some time with Annah, further developing her materials for use in training community health workers in the region.
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Tanzania
Green = New site in Moshi Blue = Previous campaign site in Kigoma
Dr. Annah attending the International Conference on Women Cancer in Kigali, Rwanda
An important value of Grounds for Health is that we never make ourselves indispensable. We actually work towards ending our involvement from the very first day we begin. That means lots of work in making sure that providers are well trained and that there is strong community support in place to ensure the continuation of the program in our absence.
So this is what has been keeping Dr. Annah busy these days. Dr. Annah Kichambati, our Grounds for Health in-country staff person in Tanzania, has been busy doing supportive supervision visits with providers and working with Kanyovu coffee cooperative leadership to make sure that community health promoters continue their mobilization work. She has also been working closely with ICAP (Columbia University’s International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs) as they take on oversight of the cervical pre-cancer screening and treatment program that GFH initiated in Kigoma.
As you read this, she is helping as they train yet a whole new round of providers. It is thrilling to see the work continue as we step away.
And on we go … across the country to the Kilimanjaro region to start up a new program with Kilicafe. Stay tuned! Hopefully we will get some staff/volunteer photos from the top of Kilimanjaro in an E-News soon!
From left to right: Dr Lydia Temba (ICAP) and Dr. Annah Kichambati (GFH)
Emmanuel Mtiti is the Jane Goodall Institute Program Director of the Greater Gombe Ecosystem Program. On our trip to Tanzania in February, we sat down with Mtiti to discuss his perspective on Grounds for Health.
This email from Executive Director August Burns a few weeks ago was too good not to share:
February 13, 2011
It’s 87 degrees according to my LL Bean travel clock. I notice the temperature as we move from place to place. It must have been 95 today as we sat in the Air Tanzania office in Kigoma trying to make our way back across the country—for some of us onto the next phase of this trip, for others on their way back home.
Air Tanzania, the successor to “Precision Air” has just announced that their plane needs maintenance and therefore there will be no flights out of Kigoma for a week. Yes, that’s a week. One plane apparently. So after 5 hours of trying to match flights to other places and then to Dar es Salaam, the capital of this country, we have hired a car and driver to take us the ten hour drive to Mwanza where we will catch a connection to Dar and then to Arusha. It is always a good reminder of the rationality of the speed that life proceeds here. As my good friend Emmanuel Mtiti has said through his broad smile:
“Don’t worry. If you do, you will have a heart attack and life is so very short”.
We are excited to report that over the past six months, Grounds for Health-trained doctors and nurses in Kigoma, Tanzania have screened just over 1,000 women for cervical cancer on their own. There are now 11 sites up and running in this region, where we partner with the Kanyovu Coffee Cooperative, Jane Goodall Institute and ICAP.
Of the women with positive test results, the overwhelming majority (>85%) have received treatment with cryotherapy. Women receiving treatment means that cervical cancer is being prevented from developing. The ongoing dedication of the doctors and nurses with whom we collaborate is humbling. Despite major shortages of personnel, they continue to prioritize cervical cancer prevention and offer these services to women in their communities.
Our training team will be returning to Kigoma next week for two simultaneous trainings of doctors and nurses in Kigoma. This will be followed by a new site visit with Kili Cafe in Kilimanjaro Region and a GFH presentation at the EAFCA conference in Moshi on February 18th.
Stay tuned for next month’s E-news, where we’ll report on those developments.
Dr. Annah’s update from Kigoma is full of positive news about our newly trained clinicians from July 2010 and their rapid establishment of screening and cryotherapy treatment services in Kigoma Region. All new sites are on track in terms of the goals and implementation plans each created as part of our training.
Two sites (of four new ones) already have begun providing screening and treatment services for women on a weekly basis. This is further proof that our training programs are working. Over the coming weeks, Annah will visit the other two sites and ensure that they have the needed materials and supplies to begin offering services in screening with VIA and treatment with cryotherapy.
Nurses Catherine and Grencia of Kasulu District Hospital and Dr. Terezia and nurse Dafroza of Kibondo District Hospital were the first of newly trained clinicians to bring their new cervical cancer prevention skills to women in their communities. Kazi njuri!
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Dr. Annah (right) with Dr. Terezia (middle)
Nurses
Nurse Dafroza in clinic
Elisa with Nurse Dafroza
(Left to right) Dr Terezia, Clinical Officer Editha, nurses Grencia, Dafroza, Catherine
From June 17 through July 5, 2010, we conducted a two-week training and cervical cancer screening campaign in Kigoma, Tanzania. This trip marked our fourth visit to Kigoma and third training and screening campaign at this site. As in our other sites, we continue to focus on the implementation of the Single Visit Approach for the prevention of cervical cancer.
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