Child Health Week - Day One

This week it is Child Health Week in Zambia during which the goal is to have every child under 5 years old be seen by a medical practitioner of some sort. In the Kakulu area, where we do our work, there is the main Kakulu Rural Health centre - commonly known as the clinic - and from there six health zones in the outlying parts of the district. Normally each zone is visited by staff from the clinic once a month to do under 5 outreach sessions - weighing children to monitor proper growth, administering vaccinations to children and mothers, doing ante-natal and post-natal check-ups and providing family planning advice and medication. The outreach sessions are held at what are known as health posts which are manned by a zone health committee comprising local volunteers who do as much as they can with local health activities - for example malaria prevention and traditional child birth - and assisting their local population with their health problems. The committee assists the clinic staff with the outreach sessions when they are held.

During this week there has to be an outreach session in each zone during the week to capture additional data and administer extra treatments. All of the zones are some distance from the health centre - three of them 12-14 km away - and normally the health centre staff have to get there an back by bicycle as there is no other form of transport ! Not to mention that someone first has to ride 5km each way to collect the vaccines from a refrigerator at Green Leaf farm - the health centre currently has no power or sufficient security to run their own refrigerated storage and the farmer kindly allows them to have a room in his house.

Given the logistics of the week I offered to provide transport to get the staff to each of the outreach sessions as well as myself and Salome (she normally does the cooking at the base but since there's no one around this week she doesn't have anything to do) to help with the sessions.

So today was day one and we headed off to Ndili Basic School - known as Powerline Zone as it is just beyond the power lines to the east of the main road (for those of you who have been here !) - and where the health post is based. Only about 8km each way so not the furthest distance to travel. We commandeered a classroom for the day and saw just over 100 children, working without a break until we got through everyone. (This zone supposedly has about 250 children under 5 so the turn-out was fairly low.)