Back to Ethiopia

Its been awhile since I sat and wrote something, although I have been facebooking about my doings. After spending 5 weeks back in Australia for my daughters graduation and son's engagement, I headed back to Ethiopia via Tanzania. Briefly to say I spent a few days on Zanzibar, some more days climbing Kilimanjaro. It was not all fun as also worked on my Pulse assignment as well as look at dermatology in East Africa.

Arriving in Addis Ababa I settled in to the accomodation, and went to the Addis Ababa office of Millenium Village Project. I also had the opportunity to meet again with the head of GSK Ethiopia, who put me in contact with a number of dermatologists. I met these dermatologists at one of the largest dermatology tecxahning hospitals in East Africa. The number of patients seen per day by about 9 dermatologists was staggering - over 500 people crowding the corridors each day. Pharmaecuticals were given free, if they were available, which in most cases were not. A later visit in January to Mekele's Ayder hospital was distressing seeing children with deformities from skin disease which lacked effective treatments.

Back in hawzen, there was turn around in support for my project and after 3 weeks have managed to get it to a stage that the TB surveillance program will kick this first week of February. Two Health Posts in 2 villages have been identified for a pilot evaluation, and the Health workers trained in recognizing and asking about TB symptoms, and collecting sputum for transport to Hawzen Health Center laboratory for laboartory evaluation. Trying to find good data in the Health Center TB register archives is somewhat daunting as the data is "not clean" for useful statistical evaluation, so investigating it retrospectively.

Spent Timkat or Ephipahny holiday in Mekele  to see the lare celebrations. Enjoyed meals with friends Mullo and Seid in their houses. The religious celebration lasted just over a day.