Thank you so much for coming to our blog. We hope that you will follow us in our journey to serve God's children in Kenya. Since our trip doesn't begin until June we just want to give you a little bit of background on why we decided to go to Kenya and what we plan to do when we get there.
As you may well know there are four of us going on this trip, Sandy, Mfon, Petrina and Samantha. We are all in our first year of medical and have gotten to know each other in a Bible study. This coming summer is our last real summer break and we didn't want to sit around in a lab doing research all summer or some other kind of job, so we started talking about going on a medical mission trip. A couple of the girls went to a Medical Mission Conference in Kentucky last semester and met Connie, the founder of Partners for Care, who has helped us set up our project. Partners for Care is a great organization and for more information you should visit their website at http://partnersforcare.org.
Now, onto what we will be doing. The project will consist of an organized, systematic door-to-door wellness screening of persons living in the Marurui slum, just outside Nairobi. Screenings will be completed for hypertension, diabetes mellitus, clean water use, and malaria prevention. In addition to conducting screenings, we will also gather statistics on polio cases and children’s immunizations for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, through a partnership with Medshare (a nonprofit that delivers surplus medical supplies to various countries) and Global H.E.E.D. (a nonprofit that works to promote social entrepreneurship in underserved countries), we will assess for disability and adaptive equipment needs among Marurui residents. The data will be collected using hand-held mobile devices called Sana (android technology that is part of a MIT research study & orchestrated by mHealth). The data will be uploaded to a computer for the purpose of determining necessary treatment and follow-up for screened residents.
Depending on daily staff activities, we will also have the opportunity to participate in community health education, the Second Chance program (a Partners in Care initiative that supports secondary education for older students desiring to re-enter school), and physical activity outreach through sports like soccer and volleyball. We will also use one of the project days to take a large group of impoverished Marurui children to the National Safari Park, an area where many have not been able to visit because their families cannot afford such a trip.
Our goal is to transform the region by introducing a new method of healthcare and technology that will not only allow low-resource areas greater access to health care, but also foster improved disease surveillance and public health data collection in underserved regions. Upon our return to the U.S., all collected data will be maintained, expanded, and analyzed. The Kenyan team that we supported (as well as all the partnering organizations) will be able to assess if we were able to effectively improve the health conditions of those in the Marurui slum by using this new model. Our efforts will be contrasted with modern day methods of healthcare delivery and other successful mhealth initiatives that have occurred in other countries (such as EpiSurveyor in Malawi). We hope to publish the data, results, and experiences we obtain in order to share with other colleagues, who are the working to improve this emerging mobile technology.
We appreaciate your prayers for us and those we will meet and get to know in Kenya. If you feel led to donate to our trip or to Partners For Care in general, please email us at kindnessinkenya2012@gmail.com.
We look forward to keeping you updated on all that God does on this journey.
Love in Christ,
Samantha, Petrina, Mfon & Sandy
