Good Afternoon (or Evening/Morning wherever you may be) followers! It’s Kaaren again, and I just wanted to say a little bit more on WAMM’s cholera project that I am so excited about. In case you were wondering about the full details and haven’t had a chance to check out the full bio of the project on our website yet, I’ll be happy to break it down for you. Link:http://www.westafricanmedicalmissions.org/page/show/819869-cholera%20intervention%20project. 

What and Why? Cholera, as I have previously mentioned, is a big problem in Sierra Leone. Just last year, SL suffered its worst outbreak in 15 years with a reported 19,000 cases and 274 deaths (WHO, 2012). We have a solution in the form of an intervention project that calls for community empowerment and involvement to help the people of Salone gain access to safe water and prevent future cases of cholera. 

How? Through partnerships with other organizations, we can work together to accomplish the goal of providing safer water to the people of Sierra Leone. More specifically, we plan to partner with Kate JohnsTon, an Adjunct Sociology professor at St. Catherine University in Minnesota. Professor JohnsTon will serve as the lead investigator in the project, manage the data gathered, and produce a publication of the gathered data. We will also partner with the WAMM headquarters in SL who will be responsible for providing access to all necessary resources for the project, providing both human and a technical resource network, and even providing housing and transportations for individual actors in the project during their time working in Sierra Leone. Finally, we will partner with the Network for HIV Positives (NETHIPS) which is currently the largest umbrella organization dealing with HIV in SL. Through NETHIPS’ existing data management system of over 5,000 HIV positive people in SL, we will survey patients in their network to gain a better understanding of how cholera is impacting their health as well as educational and economic status. 

Now I could talk about this all day but I’d rather hear your input on the project and the grand scheme of the disease. Until next time, give our website a look over, find out how you can get involved, and let me know what you think. Peace and out.