May 8th

I visited the clinic bright an early this morning to bear witness to the under-five vaccination clinic. Per District Health Commissioner the clinic would be stalked with the appropriate supplies, including the vaccines, to vaccinate children under-five. The clinic has no electricity and therefore no refrigeration system which makes storing vaccines in the clinic impossible. Silly me to think that the supplies would arrive prior to the opening of the clinic at 0800. I did not factor in Zambian time which is on average 3- 4 hours off. The vaccines arrived at 1130.

Ellen and I held a meeting for the Safe Motherhood Action Group (SMAG) and the Neighborhood Health Committee (NHC) in hopes to motivate them into action. Both groups are responsible for spreading education among the villagers, they are supposed to motivate the community in take the appropriate steps to improve health and safety within the village. Even though each group has a list of “active” members the groups have not met in several months, nor have they been “motivating” their communities. The SMAG and the NHC have slightly different goals and responsibilities. For example the SMAG is supposed to encourage mother to get prenatal care, they are supposed to encourage mothers to go the clinic when in labor, and they are supposed to encourage mothers to seek out family planning. The NHC is supposed to do community inspections to ensure that the grass is slashed, children are sleeping under mosquito nets, and bathrooms are located an appropriate distance from the hut. Ellen and my goals were to have each group make a constitution and create an action plan for their first intervention within the community. Unfortunately I felt like most of the people showed up to watch the mazungos talk, but here’s hoping. We scheduled a follow-up meeting with the groups in a month.