Health Care Workers Teaching 
Health Care Worker teaching 
Health Care Worker Training
By: Joyce, Community Health Care Worker (WPHCC) (In her own words)
Topics: Discussed personal Hygiene, Sanitation & Typhoid fever
When we meet our people in our various communities, we told them about personal hygiene, sanitation and typhoid fever.
On personal Hygiene & sanitation, we told our people not to forget about the following preventive measured like:
- Washing our hands before eating and before preparing our food.
- Taking good care of our hair by washing it every week and greasing very well.
- How to brush our tooth properly and at least brush them three times a day.
- Washing our hands after using the toilet or bathroom or coming in contact with a person or not.
- We also told them to continue clearing their surrounding in and out to avoid mosquitos or snakes coming in their homes and always keep the drinking water safe.
Typhoid Fever
On Typhoid Fever, we told our people that Typhoid Fever is a serious intestinal bacteria caused by salmonella typhi.
- It can spread through contaminated food or water.
- Through close contact with someone who’s infected.
Typhoid fever has four (4) stages and in those stages, there are different signs and symptoms.
In stage one, signs and symptoms do appear, you’re likely to experience:
- Fever that starts low and increases daily
- Headache
- Dry cough
- Abdominal pain
- Weakness
- Rashes
In the second stage, you will become very ill and experience:
- Continuing high fever
- Extremely distended abdomen
- Either diarrhea or severe constipation
- Considerable weight loss
In the third stage, you may:
- Become exhausted with your eyes half close
- In this stage, life threatening complication often develop
In the fourth stage: Improvement may come slowly if you go for proper treatment to the clinic or hospital.
After our discussion with the community dwellers, we were asked on what can they do, relating to cleaning their home, taking good care of items they used in their household daily, washing their hands?
Our answers were: They should take garbage far away from their homes. Cleaning grass around their homes. They should build dish raft to enable them take good care of home items properly. They should have clean bucket with a clean water in it and a soap beside it, place in front of the house.
We also discuss a little bit on Lassa Fever:
We told them that Lassa Fever is a serious sickness that leads to suffering and death of many people. One can get this sickness by eating food or drinking water in household items that is contaminated by pupu or pee pee of an infected rat. It can spread through contact with people who are sick with the disease or their body fluid. So any one who eat or drink contaminated food or water can get the disease.
Signs and Symptoms of a person who’s infected with the disease are:
- Weakness
- Headache
- Chest pain
- Vomiting
- Sore throat
- Diarrhea
- Cough
- Abdominal pain
A question came from the community people on:
What can they do when they come in contact with someone who has the signs of Lassa fever or someone who’s suspected of carry the disease?
- They should wash their hands with clean water and soap
- They should keep the suspected person separate from the rest of the family as you wait for help
- They should report to the nearest health facility
- We should take all of these things in to consideration to stop dangerous things entering into our homes.
Our take home massage on Typhoid fever and Lassa fever is:
- We should wash our hands often with soap and water
- We should keep our drinking water save and cover to stop rat from playing in them
- We should clean our household items daily
- We should keep our personal items separate from someone who’s infected with the bacteria.
If we don’t do these things, when we are infected, the bacteria will enter our intestine and cause problem for us that will lead to our early death.
People we met in the field:
- In Kpelleh Town, we saw a teenager girl by the name of Jenneh, 16yrs of age, who got sick long time ago, but she doesn’t know the actual time this sickness started. According to her, when this illness started, her hands and feet got swollen then her stomach also got big and her eyes color change to deep yellow. She was taken to the native doctor and treated with herbs and her feet, hands and stomach swelling went down but her eyes are still having that yellowish color.
- We saw a 12yrs old boy name David. David said that his eyes got scrip by nail since three (3) weeks ago, the scrip have turn to a big nit like raisin.
- We met Musu and in conversation with her, she said that she had a nit on her left hand and she was successful to go for the out-reach at J.F.K. Hospital. Musu Katahpah extends her thanks to the Waterfield family and Doctor Hena for her good will towards her at the J.F.K Hospital.
- We met with Hannah a 22yrs old female at Walker Farm Community, She have a big leg, and according to her oldest sister, this sickness started with nit on her nick and when it finished, sore also came on her private part that was very offensive and that no one could even sit beside her. And with unfolding situation, she was taking to sick bush, but there was no improvement and later she was brought to the C.H. Rennie Hospital where she was treated and the sore finish gradually. When she was taken home, her right foot started getting big till now it’s very big and this took place when Hannah was (9yrs) of age.
- We came across Matthew a (62yrs) old man in Dartuta Community. Mr. K. have a cough and he said that he have been suffering from this cough for long time. With our encouragement and medical advices given him, he took advantage of it and came to the clinic. Through medical diagnosis, he was suspected of TB and later referred to the TB annex and tested as TB positive. After being tested TB positive, he was put on medical treatment. Also upon his return, he appreciated our team for the medical advices given him that make him to be at live today and promise to always follow said advices.
We were able to encourage every one of them to come to the facility to get proper treatment. One of pregnant woman had miss carriage and another had stillbirth
Progress
One of our pregnant woman in Walker Farm give birth to a male child without going under medical operation. We also believed that it was also due to the medical services given her for which she took into consideration
52 pregnant women were served with the prenatal vitamins.
Total Attendants for the month (July 2019):
| Males | Females | Children | Babies Mother | Pregnant Women | Grand Total |
| 318 | 799 | 1,319 | 81 | 63 | 2,520 |
The total numbers of person that we took Blood Pressure of:
| Males Females Grand Total 17 165 182 |
