Ministry of Health HBC Workshop and Monitoring Visits

At the end of January and through the beginning of February, I participated in the Ministry of Health's HBC workshop and monitoring visits in Mkhosana as part of Environment Africa's PRP II sector (Protracted Relief Program).  This series of events started out with a day-long lecture on what the ministry of health is trying to asses followed by a practice session on the interview form and how best to coax the information from the interviewees. 

All of us attending the lecture at the youth-friendly center in Mkhosana, at the time of this photo, we were already going over the interview questionnaire.

A representative from Save the Children conducted the lecture, which mainly focused on the definition and components of 'quality of life'.  According to him, there are three B's concerning quality of life: being, belonging, and becoming.  Being was defined as the physical, emotional, psychologial and spiritual station of a client; essentially, their ability and willingness to care for themselves and function normally.  Belonging concerned with assessing the community and how it relates to the client including the communities attitude toward the client both physically and socially with emphasis on identifying cases of positive and negative discrimination.  Lastly, becoming referred to the client's participation in community activities, leisure, and personal growth.  After the quality of life discussion, we moved on to a full explanation of the questionnaire and any clarifications needed.  We then took a break for lunch, then returned for a mock-interview session with the other participants to try and identify any problems with the questionnaire.  

For the next two days, I went out into the field with two different community facilitators and interviewed clients using the questionnaire and the training I received the previous day.  The first day, I visited three clients, two children and one adult.  The first was Brightshoe (pronounced bright-show-eh), a seven year old boy with chronic knee problems.  In spite of this, he was a precocious little child, and his mother said he always is out running and playing with other kids.  Evidence that children are universally procrastinators: Brightshoe was finishing his homework for that day even as we were interviewing him!  The second child we tried to see was Simalinekosi, a nine year old girl who was very, very sick. She was taken to the Vic Falls hospital that morning by her father, so we interviewed her mother in her place. The last client on the first day was Ennah Shoko, a gogo (grandma/old lady) with a bad cough and pain in her joints.  The second day was uneventful, since we could only find one person at home to interview and that was Mrs. Anitah Ncube who was feeling well though partially shunned by the community.  Overall, the workshop and visits were worthwhile, although I do not know when we will be monitoring these same people again to check on their well being and quality of life. 

Brightshoe in his house, he was working on his homework on the floor

Brightshoe's mother, she was so vivacious; always smiling. I included this because it is a beautiful picture although you can tell how bare and spartan their house is.