Gala at Mukowe

Yesterday (Saturday) 20 of us from the hospital headed out to Mukowe (1 1/2 hours away) at 7:30 a.m. for a Gala to encourage the people in the area to be tested for HIV.  Our 2 doctors, nurses and counsellors and nurse aides came.We had a theme of "Start the New Year Right--Know Your Status!"  We went with 5 cars and our tractor and trailer!

We offered HIV testing and also Male Circumcision (which decreases your chance of getting HIV and helps to decrease Cervical Cancer in their partners) and blood pressure checks.  We set up in the classrooms for the circumcisions and for the testing and counseling.

We started with Health Education and we had a lot of questions and answers for prizes.  We also had soccer matches for the men and netball matches for the women.  The band got people up and dancing and they all really enjoyed the day. We estimate about 400 people came.

We tested over 300 new people and only a few were positive--so we were happy for that.  We did 30 circumcisions.  We gave prizes to the winning teams and were exhausted when we headed for home at 6 p.m.

The staff had a great time and want to do it quarterly.  The people had a great time and benefited from services we brought to them instead of waiting for them to go to clinics which are far away.

We want to make this a quarterly activity and reach some of the far away and hard to reach places for people in our area.

Setting up


 Testing room

 Health Education


 People dancing to the band

Soccer competition 


Band and the dancers


Circumcision Team


The crowd for the prize giving




 Prize giving

 First prize for soccer team included uniforms and balls and trophy

 Netball winners getting awards from Counsillor

 Winner for questions asked


Comments

  1. Very interesting blog post, good job and thanks for sharing such a good blog. Visit: theme of hospital

    ReplyDelete
  2. HIV is such a horrible disease. Nice to see such compassionate efforts against this scourge. Proud of this. God Speed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your love for humanity is precious. You are doing a god job. People in rural areas really need awareness to fatal diseases like HIV, its precautions and treatment. Because most of them dont have facilities to reach out to hospitls.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unpacking cintainer, interviewing a new doctor

Happy Boxing Day