Can malnutrition be prevented in our communities?
Crisent, a 2 year old boy from Karundi village survived death due to malnutrition after the intervention of community health workers. His mother became pregnant again, only two months after Crisent was born, subsequently interrupting her ability to breastfeed. As a result, at just over one year old, Crisent had become severely malnourished. Crisent was […]
How Much is a Picture Worth?
My second day on the job at FVS-AMADE Burundi I was invited to observe a huge network meeting for the leaders of the organization’s solidarity groups. As a communications and fundraising fellow, I knew that this was a great opportunity to take pictures of our beneficiaries in action. Camera in hand, I couldn’t help but […]
Accountabilities
One of the first things I noticed when I started working at Baylor-Uganda was the strange strings of numbers and letters everywhere, etched into tables and chairs, engraved into computers. It didn’t take long to understand what they were: identifiers to connect the items with their respective grant budget lines. And it didn’t take long […]
Community Health Assistants (CHAs) enhancing health equity in Zambia
Lack of qualified human resource issue is one of the major ones many developing countries such as Zambia face. This is worse in rural areas as most of the qualified staff don’t want to stay and work there. It is no wonder therefore, that most of the rural health facilities are manned by untrained staff […]
Want to live out your values? Mind the gap!
My co-fellows and I are somehow entering the final quarter of work in our placement sites. Our predecessors all warned us that the year would fly by, and sure enough, it’s nearly vanished before our eyes. Having completed seven months of the fellowship, we now have a unique view of our past, present, and future. […]
Uganda: Where did we go wrong?
Uganda is a gifted country with a lot of natural resources, favorable weather conditions and an admired tourist centre. One would expect all of these opportunities to yield increased incomes among households, which would be essential in meeting household basic needs and improving on people’s wellbeing. In fact, the Uganda economy profile for 2013 shows […]
The Chain Remains: Part I
Prison is human storage, but worse because prisons attempt to strip away the dignity of those incarcerated. Look at the school-to-prison pipeline paradigm, mandatory minimum sentencing, crack/cocaine sentencing discrepancies, or the myriad of intended and unintended consequences from the “War of Drugs” and the “Get Tough on Crime” movements. But what is more alarming after […]
Speaking Truth to Silence
It’s incredible what putting an end to silence and fear can do. When AIDS first appeared on the scene in the U.S in the 70s, it was initially called the “gay-related immune deficiency.” It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the Reagan administration even mentioned the word “AIDS” publicly. The stigma and discrimination that hounded this […]
Work for the joy of it
Many nations in the world, especially in the developing world, are experiencing poor health indicators and high mortality rates. This has normally been attributed to brain drain, inadequate staff, inadequate drugs, corruption, environmental factors and health seeking behavior. In my opinion, health worker strikes are a barrier to public health and health equity, yet it […]
Living Your Story
While reflecting on 2013 over the past couple weeks, I took some time to review my blog posts from my time last year as a GHC fellow in Rwanda. This is a post from about 8 months into my fellowship experience and right after my birthday (with some new alterations to post here). Looking at it […]