Mosquito nets, diabetes, and lice

On Wednesday we jumped right back into working and went with the group to a local housing facility for kids from hill tribes who live in town to go to school and learn Thai. They leave their families for the week and stay at a run down house with other children to help them assimilate better into Thai culture. We dropped off a load of mosquito nets to hang over their beds to keep them from getting bites during the night.

The girls snatched the pink mosquito net right up!

We’ve been working with the health clinic here in Thaton on several projects, but when we heard about their diabetes screenings we asked to go and observe. We woke up at 5:30 am to be there by 6 am, and rode with the clinic workers on their scooters to the screening at an outdoor community center. It was really exciting to see an actual public health program in action! Volunteers for the health clinic are assigned to 10 households each and were responsible for making sure everyone from their assigned group came to the clinic. Everyone who was to be tested had to come fasting to make sure their blood test would give an accurate reading. People were given numbers, weighed and measured, and asked to wait their turn. Two public health officers took blood samples that would be sent to the Mae Ai hospital for a cholesterol analysis, and finally their fingers were pricked to measure blood sugar levels. If anyone had high blood sugar, the clinic referred them to the hospital for follow-up testing and treatment. Awesome to watch! We were hoping to be able to come up with a project based on observing the screening procedures, but as far as we could tell the clinic was doing a great job.

Next we went with public health officers to the school that Justin and I teach English at for health checks. The clinic visits each school in the district once a year and checks the kids for lice, ear problems, eye abnormalities, dental caries, gum disease, iodine deficiency (which appears as a lump on the throat known as goiter), and skin diseases on the hands. The first graders were especially lucky and received two immunizations for protection against tetanus and other diseases, and also got drops taken by the mouth to prevent polio. Since none of us are certified to give shots, we helped by giving polio drops and doing the health checks for physical problems.  Doing the health checks reminded us that this area really is in great need of help! We found lice, skin diseases, gum disease, and TONS of gaping cavities.  And that was just for one small school!

Afterwards the 5th and 6th graders got booklets about how to stay healthy.