Finding A Cure For Malaria

PH Graduation--2nd Generation

Last Wednesday, we celebrated the graduation of the second generation of public health agents. There were 11 students to enter the course and there are 11 certified agents leaving it. The new group will be taking on additional public health responsibilities including weekly water testing and treatment, combating the rat and mouse problem in the village homes, reducing the standing water pools on campus, designing public health training programs for the house monitors, weekly garbage clean-up in the children’s villages and the list goes on…

Junior Francois was the 11th student to join the class.

Jonas was the success story of the class. 20 years old and still in the 6th grade, no one thought that he could handle the challenging work and weekly exams in the public health class but he shocked them all. He passed every last exam and had a perfect attendance record. While the other guys would be out having fun, Jonas could be found on the doorstep of his house, studying his public health manual. He has proven to be one of the most dedicated workers I have.

All of the newly graduated PH members enjoying some soda and pate at their graduation party.

Public Health Presentations

As a final project and a last requirement before graduation, I have all of the public health students form groups of 3, choose a topic that we covered in the 3 ½ month course and put together a 15-20 minute presentation. Each presentation had to consist of at least one large poster, a two-page written essay or fact sheet and a short skit. Each person in the group had to talk for at least 5 minutes. At the end of each presentation, there was 10 minutes of questions and answers. We had a total of five groups presenting on topics such as Tuberculosis, Nutrition, Hygiene and Sanitation (washing hands, covering your food etc.), How to take care of a sick person, and Malaria. They all did a terrific job.

I recorded all of the presentations on video. Each ended up averaging nearly 35 minutes each! Getting these boys to talk was not difficult at all! With some fine tuning, we’ll be adapting all five of these presentations for both primary and secondary lesson plans for the 1,200 students at the nearby schools.
Serool, Enock and Webert holding up their poster on Jan Pou Nou Okipe Moun Malad (How To Take Care of A Sick Person)

Jeff and Jean Roody hold up a poster on vomiting as Gedna explains the importance of rehydration.

Gedna, Delince and Daniel perform a skit showing how to recognize and treat Tuberculosis.

John and Jonas hold up a poster showing the different stages of a malaria fever while Junior discusses how to identify malaria symptoms and properly treat a person with malaria.