Today the team joined the long-awaited polio vaccination campaign. They arrived at Mzimba North District Health Office (DHO) at 6:30 am and were assigned to different groups with DHO supervisors. They then headed to different health facilities and villages to conduct three different surveys for campaign surveillance. In each village they would go to 10 households. On the doors there would be chalk-marks that indicate there are under-five children eligible for the 3rd round of polio vaccination. They checked to see whether the child has a marked pinky finger, which shows they have received their vaccination. They would also ask how the parents or caregivers knew about the campaign. They also surveyed the health surveillance assistants (HSAs) to check for compliance with established campaign protocols including marking the doors and children’s fingers correctly. Three surveys were conducted using the ODK app: (1) to understand the effectiveness of DHO’s campaign promotion; (2) to understand HSAs compliance with campaign protocols; and (3) to check how much the parents / caregivers knew about the campaign and also to check if any eligible child was missed during the campaign. Some of the sites were very far away and most of the day was spent traveling to these remote locations.
April and Rena came back to the dorm first at 6 pm. They went together to Ekwendeni Hospital, where they did the first survey. Then, they split up and went to different villages to conduct the second and third survey. April went to a more remote area that required an hour and a half’s walk, hiking up her pants to cross a river in the process. Rena only had chips for lunch. (April said, “she got lunch!?”).
Tiffany, Miku, Jade, and Penny came back at 7:05 pm. Tiffany and Miku went together, and Miku got dropped off at Engucwin Health Center and walked four hours to reach three villages. The villagers greeted them warmly, gifting them with peanuts and oranges. She also met with social mobilizers and did interviews with them, and saw villagers coming with children to get vaccinated. Tiffany was dropped off around Kamwe Health Center, and the local social mobilizers took them to two villages for surveillance and vaccination. The sites are hard to reach during the rainy season which could last up to five months.
Jade and Penny went together to two sites. They first went to Choma Health Center, and went off to different villages with volunteer community health workers from the health center. Jade also went to a school where 20 kids were vaccinated. Jade and Penny met up again at the second site, further away from Choma, where they recognized some issues: the door markings were not done correctly (on walls instead of doors), and also the markers on children’s nails were done on the tip of the nail instead of the nail bed where the markings would last longer. Some villagers were also unaware of the campaign possibly due to miscommunication during the promotion.
The team all came back for a late dinner, and will get some rest before heading out again at 6 am tomorrow morning. It is hard work but a good opportunity to practice local public health field work and visit remote communities of Malawi!
Highlights:
- Four-day polio vaccination campaign begins!
- Visiting remote villages of Mzimba North for surveillance.
All the photos were taken by SHANTU (Verbal consent was obtained before taking the pictures)
