Acronym Soup
5/12/2006
Dear all,
I hope this finds you all doing well and having an excellent Friday!Today was a good day in Namibia! Today has been one of those days that I am reminded of how much I enjoy my job and how blessed I am to be in a position that allows me to meet good people from all over the world dedicated to changing people’s lives. How lucky can I be?!?
Quite a few of you have asked me what it is I am doing in Namibia…and aside from living on Luna bars and Satsumas and watching a lot of soccer in the evenings, I’ve been assigned to come to Namibia to work on the adaptation of a WHO (World Health Organization) curriculum called IMAI—Integrated Management of Adult and Adolescent Illness. This curriculum is a generic tool developed by the WHO to assist resource poor settings in managing chronic and acute illnesses such as TB, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS (and its associated problems). It is written at a very simple level and gives very basic guidelines to be able recognize and treat the majority of illnesses that plague resource poor settings.
Many countries, like Namibia, have shortages of trained health care workers, especially doctors and nurse practitioners are essentially unknown. Consequently, there is a need to be able to transfer some of the tasks normally performed by a doctor to other healthcare workers such as nurses, pharmacists, etc… Many places have clinics in smaller, rural areas, that have no full time doctor. Nurses are running the clinics with huge patient loads, but don’t have adequate training or authority to treat many of the people and cases that come in the door. Others may have a doctor, but one that is not trained to manage more chronic illness such as HIV. Namibia is working to adapt the IMAI curriculum to their local context to train and empower nurses especially, to be able to assist with the patient burden the country is experiencing. This not only will help with patient care, but will allow individuals to be treated without having the burden of travelling long distances at a great expense.
Of course there are numerous barriers to this being able to more forward including policy issues, training and capacity deficits, etc…and this is what the meeting I will be attending next week will be dealing with. My job will then be to take all the information we gather and work we do to start the adaptation and then create the Namibian IMAI training. I’m really excited about the project and looking forward to next week.
Today the WHO delegation arrived so we were able to meet. Liz Stevens, the I-TECH Namibia country director, and I met with CDC Namibia, WHO Namibia, and WHO IMAI delegates to discuss next week’s meetings, go over the agenda, and determine if anything else needs to be done in the planning. Several workgroups have already been meeting to discuss some of the policy issues. While we were meeting, we all took a quick field trip to meet with the permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Services to have an audience with him and meet him. He gave his blessing to the project (which has been a problem in the past) and everyone left very happy and confident that this project will now really start to move forward.I’ve been trying to get back my “African ears” to be able to understand everyone’s accent and the quiet way many people talk. I’ve even picked back up my continual “hmmm’s” of assent as people are talking…kind of the southern African equivalent of nodding your head or saying uh-huh. I’ve also realized that I’m starting to speak much slower and clearly so people can understand my accent…so all in all things are good and I’m enjoying myself.
Tomorrow I have some free time to explore the city and do some souvenir shopping. I’ve been told there is a history tour of one of the townships which I’m currently on a quest to find information about…me and the ladies at the hotel desk have diligently been trying to figure out how to find out more information. They’ve been very helpful so hopefully tomorrow will turn out to be a good day. The Windhoek film festival also starts today so I may try and see some of the films it has to offer tomorrow as well.
Thanks to everyone who’ve been emailing, sending good thought my way, etc….I appreciate it. Keep me posted on how things are going on the other side of the world.
Keep well,
Lisa
Dear all,
I hope this finds you all doing well and having an excellent Friday!Today was a good day in Namibia! Today has been one of those days that I am reminded of how much I enjoy my job and how blessed I am to be in a position that allows me to meet good people from all over the world dedicated to changing people’s lives. How lucky can I be?!?
Quite a few of you have asked me what it is I am doing in Namibia…and aside from living on Luna bars and Satsumas and watching a lot of soccer in the evenings, I’ve been assigned to come to Namibia to work on the adaptation of a WHO (World Health Organization) curriculum called IMAI—Integrated Management of Adult and Adolescent Illness. This curriculum is a generic tool developed by the WHO to assist resource poor settings in managing chronic and acute illnesses such as TB, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS (and its associated problems). It is written at a very simple level and gives very basic guidelines to be able recognize and treat the majority of illnesses that plague resource poor settings.
Many countries, like Namibia, have shortages of trained health care workers, especially doctors and nurse practitioners are essentially unknown. Consequently, there is a need to be able to transfer some of the tasks normally performed by a doctor to other healthcare workers such as nurses, pharmacists, etc… Many places have clinics in smaller, rural areas, that have no full time doctor. Nurses are running the clinics with huge patient loads, but don’t have adequate training or authority to treat many of the people and cases that come in the door. Others may have a doctor, but one that is not trained to manage more chronic illness such as HIV. Namibia is working to adapt the IMAI curriculum to their local context to train and empower nurses especially, to be able to assist with the patient burden the country is experiencing. This not only will help with patient care, but will allow individuals to be treated without having the burden of travelling long distances at a great expense.
Of course there are numerous barriers to this being able to more forward including policy issues, training and capacity deficits, etc…and this is what the meeting I will be attending next week will be dealing with. My job will then be to take all the information we gather and work we do to start the adaptation and then create the Namibian IMAI training. I’m really excited about the project and looking forward to next week.
Today the WHO delegation arrived so we were able to meet. Liz Stevens, the I-TECH Namibia country director, and I met with CDC Namibia, WHO Namibia, and WHO IMAI delegates to discuss next week’s meetings, go over the agenda, and determine if anything else needs to be done in the planning. Several workgroups have already been meeting to discuss some of the policy issues. While we were meeting, we all took a quick field trip to meet with the permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Services to have an audience with him and meet him. He gave his blessing to the project (which has been a problem in the past) and everyone left very happy and confident that this project will now really start to move forward.I’ve been trying to get back my “African ears” to be able to understand everyone’s accent and the quiet way many people talk. I’ve even picked back up my continual “hmmm’s” of assent as people are talking…kind of the southern African equivalent of nodding your head or saying uh-huh. I’ve also realized that I’m starting to speak much slower and clearly so people can understand my accent…so all in all things are good and I’m enjoying myself.
Tomorrow I have some free time to explore the city and do some souvenir shopping. I’ve been told there is a history tour of one of the townships which I’m currently on a quest to find information about…me and the ladies at the hotel desk have diligently been trying to figure out how to find out more information. They’ve been very helpful so hopefully tomorrow will turn out to be a good day. The Windhoek film festival also starts today so I may try and see some of the films it has to offer tomorrow as well.
Thanks to everyone who’ve been emailing, sending good thought my way, etc….I appreciate it. Keep me posted on how things are going on the other side of the world.
Keep well,
Lisa
posted by jacob at 11:27 PM
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