Final Overview
Our last few days in Swaziland were filled with excitement, as the US made it to the FINALS of the Confederation Cup in South Africa. They would play Brazil (the GREAT Brazil) in their first FIFA Cup final, ever. They went on to lose (3-2, after a halftime score of 0-2) on Sunday night. Yiwen and I blame it on the fact that we left Swaziland. Perhaps, we should have stayed one more day. Still, our last few days were filled with warm goodbyes.
We managed to finish all of the projects assigned by our mentor. We reorganized their resource library, in an attempt to make the resources usable and accessible. We created a check-out system for their x-rays, in order to track the location of all x-rays that leave the data room. We planned and taught the teen club, and provided the clinic with resources and activities for the next few months. We created a brochure for the teen club to use in order to raise money for a nutritious meal once a month. We read to kids as they waited patiently to see a doctor. Finally, we worked on a couple of data systems – one, to help the PAC doctors develop quarterly reports for their outreach work, and another to track the progress of patients on nutritional supplements.
Both Yiwen and I were able to complete our primary projects – the implementation of our design projects from back home. I left the Lab-in-a-Backpack with “The Luke Commission”, with a promise by two eager American doctors to provide tons of feedback, and Yiwen delivered an incubator and a phototherapy light to one of the government hospitals, RFM.
On top of my primary project, and the projects assigned by our mentor, I identified several secondary projects during my five weeks in Swaziland. I worked with ICAP (International Care for AIDS Care and Treatment Program) to set up FrontlineSMS, a text-message based communication system between a central hub (ICAP), and outlying communities. ICAP then put me in touch with several Peace Corps volunteers who were hoping to use FrontlineSMS in their community development programs. We worked together to get the system up and running, and to brainstorm several ways that the system could be used in their communities.
I also worked with one of the expert clients at the Baylor Clinic to develop a data collection system for a program that is using cell phones to connect mothers of children who have received DBS tests with their health care providers, in an attempt to increase the number of patients linked to care. Finally, I worked with nurses in several outreach clinics, discussing and practicing adherence monitoring. I wish I could have spent more time with this project – perhaps, this would be a worth-while project for future interns. The Baylor clinic is focusing intently on “task shifting”, the transfer of responsibility from doctors to nurses, from nurses to expert clients, and from expert clients to communities. Adherence monitoring is one of the tasks that is being shifted, from doctors to nurses, and sometimes from nurses to expert clients.