First Impressions in Public Health
Public Health at Village Hopecore is ever-growing and expanding. These several months have focused on two goals: making our current programs as sustainable and efficient as possible as well as brainstorming and developing several new programs we will be implementing after the first of the year. With this in mind, our mobile health clinic has managed to reduce the rate of respiratory, parasitic, and fungal infections within the school system and among our loan clients, where our clean water tank initiative for water sanitation and hygiene has proven to drastically reduce the prevalence of diarrheal disease and other water-borne illness among school-aged children in all our partner schools.
For the past year, we have been distributing approximately 400 fully subsidized, treated bed nets to school children aged 4-14 and additionally provided education on malaria prevention and home water treatment to both parents and children. Net monitoring visits are showing that between 90 and 100% of these nets are being used in the proper manner and hung correctly to provide maximum protection against the mosquito vector. As a result, in school, the rate of absence due to malaria has fallen so much that we are rarely treated for malaria and almost never find cases of advanced infection, which can be fatal in some cases.
This year has been a productive and fruitful one for public health activities. As the school term comes to a close, our partnerships with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health are stronger than they have ever been. This year we are proud to announce, Village Hopecore International was awarded the Best Supportive Organization in Education from the Maara District Education Office. Keep up the excellent work Public Health Department! In the next 3 months, many positive changes will be taking place in public health, namely the implementation of new programs, the expansion of current ones, a heightened focus on health prevention and promotion, and several new additions to our staff! Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy holiday season!
Written by Haylee Barbo, 2013-14 Global Health Fellow