March Update

Here's an update on what we've been doing for the last few weeks. We spent two weeks in a city called Baguio. While we were there we took a course called Integrated Management of Childhood Illness. It is a class that was developed by WHO and UNICEF. The program is recognized globally and it teaches health workers to assess and classify children under the age of five for health problems. It's main focus is to treat the main causes that are killing children under the age of five. For example pneumonia and diarrhea. It is really a cool way to assess, classify, and treat children. The WHO has determined the correct drugs to use for certain situations, so it really has streamlined what to use on the children and when to refer the kids to the hospital if their illness is serious. It also gives you an opportunity to counsel the mothers on proper feeding habits and simple things she can do at home for a child with a cough and cold. The countries that utilize the IMCI program have worked with the WHO and UNICEF to make it specific to their country. So the diseases we assess for and the medicines we use are specific to what is killing children in the Philippines, but it is something that we can use worldwide. It's really cool. For the entire month of March we are working with a village called Dananao. It is a resettlement village (sort of like the reservations for the Indians in America). We spent the first week going through the village and weighing all the children. Then for the next three weeks of March we spend each day (mon-fri) giving health teachings and doing bible activities to the kids under 5. We have split the village into three sections so we have completed our first week with the first section and then next week and the following week we will do the same thing for the other sections. The health teachings are on things like nutrition, dehydration, safety, cleanliness, and community discussions. We also provide a healthy marienda (which in the philippines is a snack you have between breakfast and lunch, and then also between lunch and dinner). We just provide the first marienda since we are there in the mornings. We make the marienda and then also have the mothers of the children that are low or very low weight help us prepare the meals so they can learn different things they can use to cook healthy meals for their families. Then on Saturday we use our IMCI training that I told you about and do health checkups and treatments on the children under five. Towards the end of March we will also do more health checkups that will include the children over five and the adults. Also, the last week of March we are putting on a small VBS for the village and doing a village clean up day where we'll go around and clean up the village. It has gone really well so far and it has been a lot of fun. In addition to that we are doing rotations at the hospitals and rural health units with some doctors that we know. In the hospitals we spend our time with the patients praying for them and just sitting and talking to them. At the rural health units and doctors offices we do some IMCI assessments and then shadow the doctors. That has been really cool. The rotations at the hospitals have been a little tough because we have seen some pretty bad cases and there was one little boy that we saw this week that just died from pneumonia. There is another little girl there that had a high fever, had convulsions, and does not speak now and the hospital is still not sure what the high fever is from. Sometimes it is frustrating, but we try and give that to God and pray for the patients and healthworkers. So that has been what is going on this month. Next month we will go into the mountains but I'm not sure what that will look like so I'll have to give you an update on that when we get more info. Thanks for your prayers!!!