Getting Comfortable

Thursday October 2, 2008

Amy, Grace, and I finally have a command of the area. At first, we would ride our bikes to and from the market, basket full of groceries, and it seemed like that was it. But in an effort to get out and breathe some fresh air, we’ve slowly been discovering all the little corners of Navrongo. If you turn right at Hospital Junction and head straight, you’ll ride past the University and a rather impressive hotel until you reach the south-most end of town. The pavement abruptly cuts off at a distance almost serving as a crossing guard. Although nothing is keeping us, we don’t venture past the imaginary gate. Instead, we turn around, and right before we reach War Memorial, we turn right. During the day, you have to swerve in and out of school children who mill around before and after class. You ride past the oldest Church in the area where you can see town-wide gatherings of people praying during “October Devotion”. This beautiful blue-trimmed church stands as a pillar to Navrongo’s greatest asset: the community itself. If you continue past the church and schoolyards, you’ll find yourself at Bolga Rd. or the “Road to America” as someone once told me. After all, Bolga Rd. takes you to Accra where the international airport is. Anyway, at Bolga Rd. we turn left and head back to the town center. If we want to take a detour, we turn right at the “round about” and head toward the West for a bit until we reach the short cut. On one biking adventure, Grace and I found a short cut through a part of Navrongo that seemed all to removed from what we’re used to seeing. The houses are shockingly rudimentary, something you would find in Chiana or Nakong. Navrongo seemed so developed in comparison to the towns at the extremities of the district, but right here, in the heart of the city, we’ve found the simpler life. We cut through the millet field on our way back to Center, and maybe, if we deserve it, we’ll stop into our favorite shop and grab some ice cream that’s worth every last melting drop by the time we get home.

Back at Center, we’ve been spending a little more time in our apartments, bunkering down and trying to get our first paper out of the way. Last Friday, we met Dr. Ansah who works in the children’s ward by day at WMH and NIH by afternoon. Dr. Ansah will be showing us around the hospital starting next week until Dr. Williams gets back around the 20^th of October. He introduced us to numerous staff members that we will be interacting with in the coming weeks, including the head charge nurse. On Monday, nurse Williams and nurse Ataya met with me so that I might get a first hand account of the human resource situation at War Memorial Hospital. Dr. Ansah and Dr. Williams had discussed my initial ideas for the health services paper and urged me to consider a slight change in focus. I had intended on writing about the different levels of health personnel to work in the community health compounds, the health clinics, and finally the district hospital. I thought it would be interesting to take a comparative look at the different levels of care. Dr. Ansah suggested a take a more critical look at the human resource issues plaguing WMH, which I’m more than willing to do. Nurses Williams and Ataya were very helping in providing me with useful information, including a copy of the 2007 Annual Performance Report for War Memorial Hospital. The website for Ghana Health Service has also been very useful tool in researching the issue. Now, writing the paper has been a bit of a challenge. It’s gorgeous outside, and it’s so hard to sit inside and concentrate when there’s so much to enjoy. I feel like I have a mild case of Spring Fever, but it’s October!! Nevertheless, we’ve been motivating each other to get our research in and get going on our papers. Margaret, the local principal investigator for RotaTeq, has been helping us focus our interests into a study proposal. Unfortunately, I have been too busy with this paper to give a whole lot of thought to the next. No worries, I still have some ideas on the back burner.

Tuesday, there was absolutely no one at the Center. If we hadn’t been warned the night before, we would have shown up at our units and been greeted by locked doors. It was the last day of Ramadan, so very few people were around the Center. To celebrate our day off, we went to Perseverance for red-red and plantains! It is by far the best meal Ghanaians have to offer, but Parliament never actually makes it. Even though the Center was closed, the market was as lively as ever. We headed into town for our groceries and enjoyed a lazy day before the “work week” started up again. On Wednesday, I went to RotaTeq for an introduction to their trials. RotaTeq is administering a three dose rotavirus vaccine at different health clinics around the district. Merck’s rotavirus trials are taking place in Ghana, Mali, Kenya, Thailand, and Vietnam to help find a vaccine to combat acute gastroenteritis among children, and it was really interesting to see all the meticulous steps that take place to ensure that the study is carried out properly. Ebenezer showed me the online database and all the forms that need to be filled out for each child. Then, I went along with Michael and Sobe to Chiana to watch them meet with the women and children for the third dose administration. If any child had signs/symptoms of gastroenteritis, they cannot be given the third dose. In Chiana, all but one woman showed up; unfortunately, if they cannot track this woman down, the child has to be pulled from the study. Last week, they lost another subject who actually suddenly died. It was very sad but also a reminder of how important the RotaTeq trials actually are. They have lost about 35 children throughout the course of the trials to malaria and gastroenteritis, so hopefully the vaccine proves to be successful.

On a completely unrelated note, we have updates about the bus accident. Apparently, Ghana is very 1600s in terms of witches. According to many sources, the bus accident was a terrible tragedy. Although traffic accidents are the 5^th leading cause of death at War Memorial Hospital, an accident like the one our friend Evans was involved with the other weekend is always difficult for a small community to deal with. The accident was under investigation by local police, and luckily, the driver was not held accountable. However, Evans did tell us that now two women have admitted to killing the boys…via witchcraft. The witches had apparently tried to make the boys collide into another oncoming moto, but they were able to avoid that accident. The bus, however, was unavoidable, and after a few days, the witches openly admitted to causing the accident. They only came forward because the two boys were haunting them, forcing them from the dead to come forward with the truth. I asked Evans if these women had mental disabilities, but apparently, witchcraft is widely practiced. Unfortunately, this also means that Ghanaians often partake in witch hunts that lead innocent people into banishment from society. These women will surely be banished from their community for coming forward about the death of the two boys. Is it true? Who am I to say?