By Ciara Baumgartner | Fundraising Officer
Tsehay (30) is a housewife who takes care of her five children. Her husband is a day laborer earning minimum wage. We met Tsehay during the MDA campaign in her village. The distribution team approached her at her house, to give her the trachoma-fighting antibiotic azithromycin.
Aftershe took the drug, the distribution team noticed that Tsehay had an early-stage trachoma infection. Even though home-to-home mass drug distribution is time and resource consuming, one of the benefits is reaching each and every member of the community. Thanks to this opportunity, Tsehay’s condition was found by the team before it became too late to treat.
Belaynesh, a Health Extension Worker, who has received training on how to identify trachoma patients and conduct referrals,by Orbis, gave her an eye ointment and explained how to use it.
Tsehay said that she had feelt pain in both of her eyes for a while. But, that she was not able to seek medical help and thought the pain would just disappear in its own time. Belaynesh advised Tsehay to visit the nearest Health Center as soon as possible.She also informed Tsehay that, evev if Tsehay could not afford to go to the health center, Orbis have developed a system to follow up with patients in the community. Now that she understands the risk of losing her sight and knows that her eyes can be easily treated to avoid her pain, she affirmed she would visit the health center.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
