Status of Active Case Finding: complete (for now.)

With the coverage of 4 more villages on Wednesday, we’ve finished Step 1: Active case finding. Here is the summary:
Villages covered: 8 (Masiaka (a relatively large town) + 7 peripheral villages)
Children (under 5 years (U5)) MUAC-screened: 734
Children referred to Pikin Welbodi Program for screening: 113

Here is the summary of the first week of the Pikin Welbodi Program:
Children screened: 99
Children enrolled: 44
Children referred for inpatient treatment: 4

So we referred 80 children from the Masiaka town to come to the program to be screened on Monday. 60 of those 80 showed up (a decent turnout rate) to be screened. 25 more children showed up to be screened without referrals. So on Monday we screened 85 children and enrolled 35 of those pikin.

We referred 13 children from 3 peripheral villages to come to the program to be screened on Tuesday. 12 of the 13 showed up (a great turnout rate) to be screened. With 2 more children showing up without referrals, we screened a total of 14 pikin. We enrolled 9 and referred 2 for inpatient treatment.

If you’ve paid attention to the numbers, you would have noticed something interesting:

Monday: 85 pikin screened from Masiaka, 35 enrolled, 2 referred.
Tuesday: 14 pikin screened from villages, 9 enrolled, 2 referred

Masiaka town is pretty “urban” compared to the more “rural” villages on the periphery of town. I feel like what I’ve been reading in literature – about how malnutrition hits those living in rural areas the hardest – is coming to life in front of my eyes. On Tuesday, when we screened the pikin we had referred from the villages, we determined most of the of the children we screened to be acutely malnourished.

On Wednesday, we MUAC-screened under-fives in 4 more villages and referred 20 to the clinic next week – I’m afraid of what I’ll see then.

On another note – we have had mothers actually come to our office with their malnourished children! These are children that we miss during our door-to-door active case finding because they are in the fields with their parents. This is a good thing that mothers are actively seeking our program’s help (not a good thing that we have lots of malnourished pikin) because that means they are hearing good things about us from their neighbors. Yea!