18th February, 2009
Oscar Okech, Katine Project Manager speaks to Liz Ford - guardian.co.uk
We've been conducting more training for village health teams. We only train two parishes at a time because there are so many of them that they can't be trained at once. The training needs to be done in small groups so it is effective and interactive. The training is looking at childhood illnesses - how to identify the symptoms of malaria and diarrhoea, which kill children if not responded to in the first 24 hours. The village health teams (VHTs) give anti-malarial drugs and oral rehydration salt respectively and then refer the children to health centres and advise mothers and fathers to refer their children to hospital.
- This week we are equipping the newly built Ojom health centre and will supervise the staff there jointly with the district health officer to get it running. Besides this, we shall also jointly conduct on the job supervision of lab technicians, trained by the project, in other health centres to ensure they are effective in their work.
- The project district steering committee (DSC), chaired by the district chief administrative officer, is meeting this week. It's composed of district technical staff, political leaders, interest groups and other partner NGOs, like Care and UWESO. They will make comments on how the project can be improved in line with the district development plan and government policy. We've prepared a report with the chairman of the sub-county project management committee and will present it to the district this week.
- Ivan Lewis, the UK minister for international development, will be visiting Katine on Monday. It will be a short visit. The aim of his visit is to see how an NGO like AMREF works to complement, rather than to compete, with government. It will also be the chance for us to raise the issue of the lack of drugs, a national problem. I think it will be an opportunity to send a strong message about what we're trying to do in Katine, as a development model. I think these trips are beneficial. We may not raise money from DfID immediately, as the process of raising funds from big donors takes time, and we are halfway through the project. But it will raise the profile of Katine and of the work of Amref nationally, and raise awareness of what we're doing among a UK audience. DfID may later support the Katine model in AMREF elsewhere, or scale it up in other organisations. But that in itself is an achievement - that what we have done works. We want to recreate the Katine model of how development can be done.
- We've also been training female teachers in gender mainstreaming and the inclusion of girls in the education system, to be role models for girls and to support girls in school. We want to give girls confidence in their social interaction with boys, so they don't feel discriminated in class, and encourage them to study subjects like science and maths. We've trained 42 teachers and they are now ready to go back to school.
- Next week we will begin training community animal workers, which has been delayed. There are seven workers who will be providing animal services to villagers. Each will be given a bicycle and a drugs kit. The community will pay a fee for their services to allow them to buy drugs to replenish their stocks. They will form an association and have a central store so that they can get cheap drugs at discount if they buy in bulk.
