Well,
In case you were wondering why we are here, there is a reason.
Witness: GAIA volunteers Julie and Lauren walked with the TB Bolo educators out into the village, and after just visiting a few houses, discovered one in which a woman had been diagnosed with TB, had been “cured”, but her cough had come back – but she hadn’t been to the clinic to get it diagnosed (just based on the history, this is most likely TB). The TB Bolo educators gave her a GAIA ticket (which lowers the cost of her care at our clinic), and the next day she turned up at the clinic, where she was seen by our Dr. Kone, and where she will have her TB worked up. What does this mean? One case of TB taken off the streets; fewer of our HIV patients infected with TB; one more case of TB detected for the national Program. All very good outcomes for one day’s work.
Witness: Today, we went up the hill (where the Point G Hospital is located) and we are greeted warmly by our friends Dr. Dao (Head HIV researcher) and Dr. Diallo (head of the only TB ward in the country). Diallo is thrilled to have the student volunteers working on TB and starts off by saying that he is embarrassed to even mention the TB “detection rate” of Mali – it is 27% – less than a third of the possible cases of TB in this country are identified. Most of the ones that are hard to detect are HIV infected. The lack of detection means that people go untreated, children die, lives are interrupted and cut short. He promises to support the student’s work and will do a full interview with them later this month. The students will go back every Tuesday to see patients with him.
The TB ward has the most wonderful green corridors, I will post a picture of our friend Souleymane Diallo in the morning light. Dao has recently started a clinical trial of HIV treatment in Mali. His experience will inform us when it is time to do our own trial, of our own GAIA vaccine.
Witness: This afternoon, we are greeted warmly by Dr. Berthé, our contact at the National TB program, who also welcomes the students and promises to help. He encourages them to report back to him at the end of the month to see what can be done to improve TB detection in Mali. He remembers his promise to choose Sikoro as a pilot for the national “TB Prevalence study” if Sikoro is not picked in the final “random selection” of locations around the country where the TB prevalence study will take place. He says, when Julie asks, that he doesn’t know why we couldn’t do TB sputum stains right at the clinic in Sikoro, since the plan is to do that at some point anyway – he will wait for the students to report back, and if they think sending patients to get sputums done at the local CSRef is an impediment to detecting TB, he’ll see what can be done to get TB sputum detection done in our clinic, by training the lab employee. Again, he says that this program is incredibly important and thanks us all for traveling so far to help Mali out.
And in betwixt and between, there is that wonderful mix of dust and donkeys, of sneaker displays and SMS messaging, of carts and their horses, french bread warm from the oven, mangoes in buckets on the street corners, smiles all around.
It is wonderful to be here in Mali. Thank you for supporting the work of our tiny, struggling not-for profit. We may be small, but we are mighty, and – this is something that we are all doing, together, to change the world.