Last week, GHF Angela traveled to all 8 Rural Health Centers that are part of the Kabudula Community Hospital catchment area to begin the patient recruitment process for the surgical aspect of the Mediserv trip.
For our previous trips, a lot of our patients came from the community that was directly surrounding Kabudula Hospital. We want to ensure that patients further away from the main hub that is Kabudula, that do not have access to these services are being recruited and told about the program, so they can be treated also.
At each health center, she met with the Clinical Officers there who are responsible for running the clinics. She introduced the Mediserv trip and to ask if the Clinical Officers were already aware of patients that could use our services. Angela also met with the Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) that each health center has. HSAs are responsible for encouraging healthy behaviors throughout the communities and linking patients with the health centers and care. HSAs from these health centers will help us to find patients in their communities and make them aware of the screening day we will have at each health center. Together, the HSAs and the Clinical Officer at each health center will help us find patients in their communities who need surgery.
We’ve found that patients often struggle the most with transportation (view our previous posts about traveling to the rural health centers from Kabudula describe what it is like for us.) We want to come to these patients to make sure that they aren’t missing out on a treatment that they could need, because they can’t get there or haven’t heard about it.
In May, we will host screening days at each of these health centers, where we will sign them up for treatment days at Kabudula during the Mediserv trip.