Meningitis Vaccination Time

There was a national campaign to vaccinate vulnerable populations against meningitis A  this month in Senegal and I was able to go out with teams on several of the vaccination days. It was almost exactly like the Yellow Fever Vaccination Campaign that happened earlier this year, which went really well. I like participating' it's interesting to see how it all rolls out, it's great to get out into the bush and see new villages, and it's reassuring that big vaccination campaigns like this happen on a regular basis. 

I'm not a nurse or doctor or even an EMT, so pretty much all I did was fill out the little pink proof-of-vaccination cards. The Health Center staff knows that PCVs can write quickly and are generally pretty efficient when it comes to things like setting up a vaccination site and making sure everything proceeds in a relatively orderly fashion, so on all the days that I went out with vaccination teams that was what I did. We filled out hundreds and hundreds of little cards (location, name, age, date, vaccine lot number, expiration date, closest health structure), made our best guess when it came to a lot of the ages, and ran through a little spiel about meningitis more times than I can remember.  

There are always challenges - the vaccine must be kept cold, things tend to run late, some people are afraid of needles, it's hard to fuel up the trucks when the nearest gas station is 50 miles away, there are stock shortages, people are speaking Wolof and French and Puular and Malinke and Jahonke and Bassari all at once - but the health workers do am impressive job of keeping it all together.

Ndiaye, the nurse who was our team leader, is an extremely calm and professional person, and the Red Cross Youth volunteers were helpful. Overall it was a great vaccination campaign and it's nice to know that the vaccine lasts 10 years.

Vaccination Time!

Work Stuff: Training on Cervical Cancer Screening

I saw this recent New York Times article about a cervical cancer screening program in Thailand, and it just so happens that this week I'm sitting in on a week-long training program that teaches local nurses, midwives, and health workers to screen women for cervical cancer. The ten trainees came in to Kédougou from surrounding towns and villages, including Salémata, my village, and are spending the week learning about cervical cancer issues.

The Kédougou training program, run by Kédougou Regional Hospital staff, and supported by Peace Corps Volunteers and Peace Care, is pretty comprehensive. There are sessions on cancer in general, anatomy, risk factors for cervical cancer, how to recognize pre-cancerous growths, available treatments, and how all of this applies to people living and working in Senegal.

The schedule for this week's training

For many reasons, including lack of education and resources, cervical cancer has a disproportional impact on people living in certain parts of world. (The United States isn't in the dark red zone, but we're not in the white, either.)

From the WHO's cervical cancer guidebook

If you're interested, do take a look at "Comprehensive cervical cancer control: A guide to essential practice," provided by the WHO.

Also, my own little PSA: As you prob'ly already know, human papillomavirus (HPV) causes all sort of problems, including cervical cancer. In addition to regular check-ups, there is a very safe, effective vaccine for HPV available for males AND females who live in parts of the world that have more developed health systems.

Rabies and Rainbows

The day we left for our most recent trip to the villages was hot and fairly miserable. I'd gotten my obligatory rabies and hepatitis vaccinations, which left my arm feeling like hot lead and my stomach gurgling. Between trying to do laundry in buckets, adjusting to the malaria medication, sitting through technical trainings (on gardening, security, and common illnesses, etc) and the heat and the dust and the nausea, I was not exactly in a fantastic mood.

And then a package arrived from Switzerland, and it was filled with rainbows and flowers and adorableness (aka beautiful hand-painted stationary from the girls I used to nanny for in Lausanne) and suddenly everything seemed a lot less unpleasant.

It's always lovely to get mail, but this was definitely the sweetest thing I've received so far. 

Lariam Dreams...

I haven't had any Mefloquine-influenced dreams yet, but that was what I wanted to call this blog. I reconsidered after seeing that the domain name was taken, and also figuring that it's better to not tempt fate.

In any case, my life in Senegal (both days of it) have been surprisingly pleasant. There are 48 other trainees in my group, we landed in Dakar yesterday at dawn, wedged ourselves into a couple mini-buses and drove off to start Pre-Service Training. As the sun came up we looked out the windows at the sprawl of Dakar and the multitude of crumbling, half-built apartments on the outskirts of town, and then I half-slept through the rest of the drive. The Peace Corps Training Center in Thiès ("tchess") has everything a trainee could want, except for hot showers, but I'd take semi-reliable wifi over hot showers any day. We dropped our bags, had some food and some rest time, and jumped right into orientation and placement interviews. We also had individual medical sessions, where we were vaccinated for typhoid and meningitis, put on anti-malaria pills (I am now taking Mefloquine, the generic for Lariam), and given first aid kits and a stockpile of handy antibiotics and whatnot. My roommate and I decided to stay up until 21h00 (9:00pm) and we passed the time by writing in our journals and complaining about how exhausted we were and then promptly conked out at 21h03.

Today we had a guided tour of the area immediately surrounding the training compound, listened to another introductory presentation, had our French language assessments, and ate spiced rice, chicken and chopped peppers for lunch, which was delicious. Then we did our prep reading for our culture and etiquette session tomorrow, realized that we'd behaved fairly disgustingly at lunch (drinking with our left hands, sitting like heathens, making inappropriate small talk) and were extra glad that we have this week of heavily supervised compound-based preparation before meeting our first host families next week.

I'm going to try to get a "day-in-the-life" style photo album or video up this weekend, and after next Tuesday I won't have daily internet access for awhile, but I'll update when I can. Jërëjëf, ba beneen!