Alice in Africa

The past couple of days have been a whirlwind of activity – definitely
different from the first couple days I was here! My professor, Ndola,
has been here for the past three days with her daughter and two other
women from the Bixby Center for Population and Family Planning. We
have had a number of meetings with the head of the Tigrai Health
Bureau to discuss the formation of a new project. This project will
develop a system to formalize an accurate reporting of vital
statistics (births/deaths). Currently, people are required to pay at
the government office to register a birth or death. Many people don’t
report these events, which makes it difficult to accurately determine
causes of death. This is important to us because we want to know how
many women are dying of maternal causes. Tuesday we traveled to 3 of
our 8 sites to collect data for the Depo project which Sally and I
will begin to develop a database for today and start entering data. We
were traveling all day in the back of a Land Rover getting dusty and
bumping up and down. It was the kind of trip that I wish every head of
the WHO or UN or all those people who developed the UN Millennium
Development Goals could take. Then they could really understand why
just advising women to get to the nearest health facility when they
experience complications during birth is just not possible for
everyone!
We all had a great time together and I was sad to see Ndola and her
daughter leave, but the other two women (and Sally) will be here for
another week. Sally and I are also thinking about taking a quick trip
to Lalibela to see the rock-hewn churches…it may take us a few days
with the way the buses run! I hope to be able to post pictures soon, I
may be getting a share of an office in the Tigrai Health Bureau and
then I will have broadband internet…wooooooo!
Finally, I got to watch some BBC yesterday and I am very excited about
Obama…yay!