Week Two - Day One Video Diary

Week Two Begins

This week we are visiting a variety of health organisations throughout Gambia, in order to develop and broaden our knowledge of the health systems ad services already established here.

We had a high-energy presentation first thing this morning, as the Nova Scotia Gambia Association (http://www.novascotiagambia.ca/) treated us to a powerful performance from their peer-to-peer drama troupe. The organisation runs numerous health education programmes in the country, one of which uses the drama troupe to deliver issue-based theatre sketches to villages and towns throughout Gambia, using young people to target and educate fellow young people.

This education programme, and its focus on using drama as a key vehicle to disseminate information, has been incredibly successful in educating young people in Gambia through its ability to tackle sensitive issues such as HIV, domestic violence and sex-education in an engaging and accessible manner.

We then visited Concern Universal (http://www.concernuniversal.org/), a British NGO that specialises in offering education, support and treatment for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis. They have a particular focus on capacity building, setting up organisational structures and frameworks for governmental and non-governmental services.

Concern Universal receives financial support from the Global Fund, and has offices in several countries throughout Africa. Their Gambian office also serves large sections of Senegal, particularly in the south of the country, where they have primarily been involved in peace-building operations.

Finally, we met the several members of staff at the Gambian Family Planning Association (GFPA), before having a tour of their clinic, in which they offer family planning advice seven days a week, as well as also carrying out comprehensive medical services, including anti-natal care, vaccinations and infant care.

It was extremely useful to meet with the three organisations and see the work that they do, as all three are relevant to out infant-malnutrition project, in particular through their focus on health education. Seeing first-hand other organisations and the methods by which offer health care, education and treatment is enabling us to better assess and develop our own methodology, and will hopefully help to positively influence the outcomes of our project.

Day 5

We made an early start at the hospital this morning, as Fridays are traditionally half-days in Gambia. Having had a really good week so far – we have a very good case study, whose mother and father have fully consented to participate in the project, and have both assured us that they are looking forward to us visiting their home just outside Banjul – we decided to stay in the classroom to discuss the final written report. We have a structure in place for the report as a whole, but felt we should focus closely on the main body of the report.

After a long discussion, we have broken the body of the report down to four sections: Pregnancy, Birth, Feeding, Treatment.

Encompassing all of these will also be a fifth section; Discussion. This will be a consideration of the cultural, local, regional, national and global factors that effect the four main sections. This will also include substantial consideration of the pre-birth factors that can lead to malnutrition, such as the education of the mother and father, and the mother’s health from birth.

We have organised ourselves in to two groups, and on Monday each group will approach two of the four main sections. We will then come together as one group to talk about the Discussion section in relation to Pregnancy, Birth, Feeding and Treatment.

All in all we feel the project is progressing extremely well so far. Next week we will be visiting various health organisations, clinics, governmental and non-governmental organisations and rural health centres throughout Gambia, which will give us a far better insight to the Discussion section of our report. It will also enable us to consider our case study, and thus malnutrition generally, within a far wider health context.

Days 3 & 4 Video Diary

Choosing the Case Study

Project Mission Statement

Yesterday we had a really productive morning session with the Gambian students. We decided it would be helpful for ourselves, and extremely beneficial for the project, if we composed a mission statement for the whole project. Together we came up with five key points that we all wanted to complete within the project time-frame. This way we would have a working structure in place, and a set of goals to work towards, which as we are only here for four weeks will enable us to set a daily itinerary specifically focused to completing these goals.

The Mission Statement is:

To explore the multidisciplinary factors which contribute to the pathway of a child with malnutrition

1. To develop and maintain a cohesive international multidisciplinary team.

2. To gain the trust and participation of the case

3. To understand the past and current medical history of the case, and the future expectations.

4. To explore the social, economic and cultural history of the case.

5. To understand the link between the global, regional, national and local influencing factors and their application with the case and the conceptual model of globalised health.

View the mission statement in the video above.

Day 1 Video Diary