News – What has been Accomplished!

March 2015 Medical Trip

This year we were preceded by Lauren Rissman, a Tufts 4th year medical student, who spent the month of Feb working with Peter Minjale at St. Andrews.  She  had an amazing time and said she would spread the word at Tufts about how wonderful the experience was.

On March 14, 2015 this year’s Bridges to Malawi group, which included Drs Lisse and Hangen and old friend Dr. John Lozada as well as Josh Tello, RN and his wife Jenny, LISCW; Mariah Latzka and Kristina Pollock (2 Univ of Hawaii 3rd year nursing students); Samantha Lozada, NYU sophomore; and 10 high school students (Ruth Schade, this year’s contest winner; Brendan McMullen; Samantha Vaccaro; Jazmin Murillo; Nicole Wynne; Natalie Betez;Hannah Carroll; Kayla Monteiro (veteran of last year’s trip); Olivia Beaudoin; and Baylee Loewen. Continue reading “March 2015 Medical Trip”

January/February 2015 Status Letter

16th February 2015 Status Email

We are very excited that the second phase of the IRS is finished now covering three villages AND that Peter Minjale says there are no mosquitoes in any of these 3 villages.  He also says that, although they are seeing malaria cases at St. Andrews, NONE of these cases have been from the villages where the spraying has been done!

29th January 2015.

Dear Brian,

K2 TASO IRS EXERCISE IN MAKANDA VILLAGE, KASUNGU, MALAWI

On behalf of K2 TASO I wish to give you the following photographic report as we started the second phase IRS exercise in Makanda village. This exercise helps in killing mosquitoes once the mosquitoes get in contact with the sprayed surfaces.





We are very grateful to Bridges Malawi for your support to K2 TASO in order to implement the exercise. We will send you data upon completion of the exercise. Tomorrow we will start IRS in Mphepo village.

Kind regards.

Peter.

SUBMISSION OF INDOOR RESIDUAL SPRAYING, 12/23/2014

23RD DECEMBER 2014.
Dear Brian,
SUBMISSION OF INDOOR RESIDUAL SPRAYING (IRS) PROJECT PROPOSAL FROM K2 TIGWIRANEMANJA AIDS SUPPORT ORGANISATION (K2TASO) TO BRIDGES MALAWI
On behalf of K2 Tigwiranemanja AIDS Support organization (K2 TASO) in Kasungu district, Malawi let me take this opportunity to submit a project proposal on IRS, (second phase) to Bridges Malawi in USA. We are very grateful for your support towards the first phase of similar exercise which took place from August to September 2014. Malaria still remains the number one cause of mortality and morbidity in children under the age of five years in Malawi. It is also one of the major threats to pregnant mothers in Malawi.
In the first phase of IRS project we sprayed three hundred and fifty three houses in Makanda village here in Kasungu east. In order to promote malaria prevention, besides IRS we also encouraged the rural masses of Makanda village to practice some environmental control measures like cutting short growing grasses around their houses and getting rid of stagnant waters as both remain good factors for the harboring and multiplication of mosquitoes, carriers of parasites which cause malaria. We will need to send you report on the prevalence rate of malaria from September 2014 to end February 2015 as the outcomes will be a comparator to the report (with similar six months period) which we initially sent you i.e. on the prevalence rate of malaria from January, 2014 to 30thJune 2014 and it was 16.1%.
In this second phase of IRS program it is our wish to scale up the program to the two villages neighboring with Makanda and these are Mphepo and Chinemba villages both of which are smaller villages than Makanda. We expect to run this IRS second phase for 16 days.

Continue reading “SUBMISSION OF INDOOR RESIDUAL SPRAYING, 12/23/2014”

Malaria Prevalence in Makanda Jan-June 2014

7th October 2014.
Dear Brian,
MALARIA PREVALENCE FOR MAKANDA AREA FROM 1ST JANUARY 2014 TO 30TH JUNE 2014
I hereby write to inform you that we collected data with regard to malaria prevalence in Makanda area which has a population of 1796 people. The number of people who suffered from Malaria i.e. confirmed malaria positive by either rapid diagnostic test or electronic microscope was 289 representing 16.1%. Out of the 289 it was found that 193 were children aged five years and below representing 66.7% of the malaria infected people. This data was collected from health centers which serve Makanda community i.e. St. Andrew’s hospital, Mtunthama health center, Wimbe health center and Njobvu health post. There was a total of 283 dwelling houses which were sprayed.
AIM OF THE IRS PROGRAM
Following the indoor residual spraying exercise carried out in Makanda village in September 2014 our target is to reduce malaria prevalence from 16.1% to 8% from 1st October 2014 to 31st March 2015. Our plans are to do the second spraying exercise in January 2015.
More comprehensible report on all the activities and expenditure will be submitted to you by next week. We are always grateful for your financial support towards the IRS program.
Stay blessed.

Peter.