Kitukiro: Baseline Surveys and HIV outreaches

A big Jambo (hello) from Kitukiro! We are over half way done and are eager to keep our work rolling. We have completed baseline surveys and were able to survey 98 out of our 160 households. We are very happy we were able to reach so many households in just 8 days of surveying! We were able to analyze the data and pick out myths people had and also realize areas that need further education. We will be using that data to create our sensitizations. We think the data collected shows us a good representation of the education level in Kitukiro.

While we were surveying, we did a lot of mobilization for an upcoming outreach and held our HIV Day on July 21^st. We had a team from St. Mary's join us and were able to have 128 people tested for HIV and 213 people tested for malaria. Many people were able to receive medication and get support. The people of Kitukiro were very happy with our services and we received very positive feedback from the village. We have not held other sensitizations yet and we hope that having a successful health day will help encourage more people to come to our future events.

Another success for our team has been retraining our VHTs using our own curriculum. Each VHT is responsible for a certain health concern in the village, so it is of utmost importance that our VHT's are informed and help us dispel common misconceptions. Our VHTs were excited about the training. It is our hope that our VHTs are confident in their health knowledge by the time we leave so that they can continue to be valuable assets to the people of Kitukiro.

Also, both our fearless team leaders are ill with malaria causing our team to have to work harder and have better team work to have everything fall into place correctly. We are doing great with that and our team is working very well together!

We are looking forward to further VHT training and sensitizations on sanitation, family planning, and malaria. Lots to do in the next 3 weeks!!