Busy week at Chidamoyo

This week went very quickly.  On Tuesday the 19th I picked up a new visitor, Julie Gibson, from CA and Florida.  She has been accepted into Medical School in July and came her to get some hands on experience.   She has been busy and her first day here she learned to draw blood and watched some bones being set.

Thursday we went to Harare and got registered with our truck to be able to transport.  We bought a baler box and packs for tobacco to start transporting to Harare and Karoi soon.  We are excited that we will be having money to help the hospital, with the truck.

Friday we had 8 visitors who came for Harare to spend the day and night with us.  Dr. David Katzenstein, from Stanford University, lead the group and brought Lab and ITC people with him to talk about the start of our research project we will be doing together.  We will be doing Viral Loads by drawing blood and Dried Blood spots to look at adolescent/children from age 5-18 who are on ART (AIDS medication) and how well they are taking their medication and how well it is working with them.  This is a vulnerable population as many are orphans and get moved around from relative to relative and so they tend to miss medication.  Also adolescents tend to rebel by stopping their medication as a way to punish their family, so we want to see if there are ways to intervene if we need to.

We spent time discussing who is going to do what.  We hope also to benefit with students who will come and help us with the Lab and IT things.  We look forward to our interacting.

Major went off this morning to Zvipani (32 kms away) for a men's conference he is preaching at.  This is a mens meeting for all of our local churches.  It will be a great encouragement for the men in the church in our area.  We are thankful for that.

Julie

Baling Box

Our group that came for the Research project