The Nuts and Bolts of Better Health
By Kaylyn Koberna This morning I sat down with the Maintenance Supervisor and Medical Engineer at Bwaila Hospital to go line-by-line through an exhaustive inventory of spare parts. Half inch galvanized sockets? Cut the quantity by half. Thousand-watt theatre halogen bulbs? Essential. Nine-volt rechargeable batteries? We will make do without. It was tedious, frustrating, and […]
Snap Back to Reality — Why Cutting Funding for SNAP Cuts Our Nation’s Progress
On August 28th, 1963, almost 300,000 people marched on the nation’s capital to listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver the most powerful demand to end racism in history. On January 8th, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared the official intent of the United States government to put an end to poverty. We’re half a […]
Whose Base Line?
On January 25th Zomba City health practitioners from across sectors came together to discuss the Zomba City Council Report on HIV and AIDS. I had the fortune to attend through representation of the Zomba-based NGO that I work for, as the Monitoring and Evaluation Fellow, the Art & Global Health Center Africa. I attended the […]
HIV At-Home Test Kits in Malawi?
The debate all began one year ago, in a lecture at my graduate school, Boston University. Are at-home HIV test kits ethical? Will they work? The presentation for the recently FDA-approved oral, at-home kits was given by an FDA employee, that was an integral member in the approval process. The audience was composed of public […]
Refugee Women: The Champions of Community Health Promotion in Kyangwali Refugee Camp.
I have now completed six months holed up here in Kyangwali Refugee Camp doing primary health care activities at my placement organization, Action Africa Help International (AAHI). I came here in August 2013 as a Global Health Corps Fellow to serve as a Health Officer with AAHI under its refugee care program. AAH-I is an […]
And so it began…
It was the kind of warm, Rwandan morning that makes an expat forget they miss friends and family. Regina and I approached the gates of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) stadium dressed to the nines and buzzed by the excitement of a large crowd waiting to enter the event. We were attending […]