After 2 great weeks of training with Global Health Corps at Yale, I'm now at work in Kampala with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). My Global Health Corps (GHC) partner, Isaac, and I are working on a couple of projects to start, and then our work will likely evolve from there depending how the results are.
Right now, it looks like we're going to be focusing on two projects at first - one is the project I went up north to Gulu for, which is researching the period before HIV-positive patients start antiretroviral treatment. We're trying to determine some of the reasons patients are "lost" to treatment, initiate ART too late (ie when their viral load is already extremely high and they have major opportunistic infections), and what some solutions to improving this period of care might be. Unfortunately, we may be restricted to looking for solutions that are "simple and free" so it could get very frustrating.
The second project is trying to decrease the turnaround time for patients receiving test results for early infant diagnosis, HIV staging, and other tests. We're trying to build a hub system where one hospital with a lab is linked to surrounding village health centers by a motorcycle driver with a very specific schedule who will also deliver samples that need to be mailed. I think that one could be very cool (if it works well) because reducing turnaround times for the tests makes it easier to get patients proper treatment.
With a few of the African fellows at training - Jean D'Amour, Morris, and Edmund
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