Village Network Africa

Village Network Africa

As the founder of ViNA, Dr Anita Boiling is working in Tanzania  training local rural residents to become Community Health Club Leaders (CHC).  The model used is adapted from Africa AHEAD (africaahead.org), who provided training materials and mentoring for the project. Lives of disease and poverty are changed through health education by volunteers of Village Network Africa (ViNA), a 501 3C non-profit.

Communicable diseases such as cholera, malaria, typhoid, bilharzia, schistosomiasis and worms are rampant in East Africa. Health promotion/disease prevention is taught through a series of topics using a picture based system in an interactive format. Many of the rural people are illiterate, so the visual aides are invaluable for CHC leaders to use in the classes they facilitate.  The trained leaders begin their own classes after their education, overseen by our partners on the ground, an RN and social worker from the Sisters of Notre Dame in Njiro. In total, we have trained 60 women in Moshono ward and 40 men and women in Terrat ward in the Arusha district.

The education is structured so that understanding of disease causation and transmission is addressed first. Most of the people never learned about germs.  We demonstrate germ transmission by pretending to sneeze with flour on our hands to give a visual of how airborne germs spread. Then we shake hands with them to illustrate how germs are passed by hands. Much discussion ensues and misinformation corrected. For instance, when we assessed the understanding of the cause of malaria, we were told the soft corn and mangoes cause malaria. Thinking about this, I realized the peak malaria season was when corn was soft and mangoes were ripe (they have corn dry on the stalk, so it is very hard and chewy when cooked.)

Other topics are water sources, water safety, sanitation, and the endemic preventable diseases.  The water topics educate about which water sources are safe and how to prevent water contamination once obtained. Sanitation education is mandatory; many have no latrines, so urination and defecation occurs in outside living areas.  The sanitation ladder teaches how to improve the situation by going “up the ladder” from open defecation to cat sanitation (burying it) and on to the different types of latrines.

ViNA developed a sexual health module after being informed by a clinical director (less education than an RN) that the subject was missing from our program but was the most common reason for clinic visits! The sexual health module generated much discussion about STI’s and female circumcision, a current practice of the Maasai tribe despite being outlawed nationally.  The CHC students told us that female circumcision was necessary because otherwise women would stink, become prostitutes, not have enough room to deliver their babies, that the baby would be choked by the labia and the women would not be marriageable.  The education may not have changed things overnight, but the discussion and number of questions indicated that beliefs were being challenged. A Maasai clinical director who translated for us was fabulous in debunking these beliefs in a culturally acceptable manner.

To understand the impact the education has had, we had some of the new trainers discuss how their lives were changed, see testimonials on the home page by two Masai Women.

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Village Network Africa

by Anita Boling,Director

Using the Africa AHEAD  program materials, Village Network Africa (ViNA) trained 28 Community Health Club (CHC) volunteer leaders in the rural Kibale district in Uganda in 2009. The leaders were elected by residents from 14 villages. Jihan Mandilawi, MPH and Anita Boling, RN, MSN, PhD trained the health leaders and David Kyamanywa, MSW assisted and translated. The seminar was held 8 hours a day for a week, and ViNA supplied lunch for all participants. The health volunteers were very enthusiastic and eager to learn the material. Upon completion of the seminar, CHC leaders were given certificates and supplied with a canvas bag filled with laminated Africa Ahead materials, attendance sheets and membership cards. CHC leaders who started the clubs and followed through with holding club meetings were given bikes donated by the Wheels for Life non-profit to facilitate their transportation and to attend meetings held by local nurses and a clinical director. The CHC leaders were trained recently on malaria prevention and use of mosquito nets. Following CHC meetings on malaria, ViNA and HisNets supplied 2000 family sized mosquito nets to villagers from the 14 village target area. Concomitant with the club meetings, 18 shallow wells were installed by Rotary; the Africa Ahead education complimented this major change. A Peace Corp water engineer, Caleb Fader, reported that the medical clinics now report a 98% decrease in the incidence of diarrhea. Mijumbi Gabriel, our previous local ViNA employee, reported that the community health club continues to grow and that CHC leaders remain motivated to hold the health club meetings. We found this program to be very successful at disseminating basic health principles and practices in very rural areas of Africa and are thankful to Africa Ahead for their excellent work! RESPONSE FROM AFRICA AHEAD Thank you to the Village Africa Network Team for this feedback: it is exactly what we were hoping to receive and pass on to others via our website, which should reflect the achievments of other organisations, and not just Africa AHEAD. Here is an enterprising organisation that can appreciate a good thng when they see it , and is able to take theory and translate it into a practical programme without any help from Africa AHEAD staff. It is truly encouraging that Village Africa Network that has successfully used the CHC Methodology as it was designed, including the training materials and membership card and they can already report such a massive drop in diarrhoea: 98% is a huge claim and we would love you to fill in more detail of this.

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