Announcing the 5th annual REACH with Us Gala dinner!

Please join us for the 5th annual REACH With Us Gala dinner:

All are invited! You may email Karen Brown (brown.karen.r@gmail.com) to RSVP or if any questions.

Week 2 Public Health

Clinic week is over and we are starting our public health week in the schools. The kids are too cute and hopefully they'll learn something (as will we).  Time is going by so quickly but it's has all been amazing thus far.

Welcome to Ghana!

 We've arrived safe and sound in the village of Ho! Everyone is so amazing and the food is fantastic. We're so excited for the welcome ceremony tomorrow and then we start our work in the clinic. Wish us the best.

Water Filter Project

Imagine a jumbo jet full of children crashing and all those kids tragically and senselessly losing their lives. This is not far from reality since lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing…every four hours. Now imagine this: You, living in the United States, capable of providing the direct means of keeping these children alive with a small donation. A place where your money goes directly to providing clean water for children and adults alike. Would you do it?

Do we have the ability to cause a ripple in this river of hardship and difficulty associated with lack of access to clean water? Today, I tell you that we can. Join Reach4Ghana (R4G) in its quest to provide clean water for hundreds of families in Ghana for years to come. A contribution of simply $25 will buy one large filter which will provide clean water for a family for THREE years and 100% of the proceeds will go directly to purchasing each filter. That means NO overhead cost and hence, you personally know that you are giving the life saving gift of water to those in desperate need.

These filters were developed by an MIT professor and are made locally in Ghana through a sustainable organization known as Pure Home Water. Hence, we are hoping to simultaneously help support their efforts in providing clean water as well as stimulate the local economy.

Who We Are: R4G is composed of medical, pharmacy, and physical therapy students in collaboration with physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and pharmacists that aim to provide sustainable medical relief as well as rural health education to five villages in the Volta region of Ghana. This Friday, we begin our journey and are asking you to help give the gift of clean water to those in need.

While you can’t hear them, children RIGHT NOW families are in desperate need for our help. Though we are small organization, we know that with your help we may be able to make a dent in this gross epidemic that CAN BE PREVENTED.

Below is the Paypal account for where you may be able to donate any monetary amount towards our goal. Remember $25=you giving clean water to a family for three years.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BJJYVJX898A22

More info on R4G: http://www.reach4ghana.org/

More info on the filters including a video: http://purehomewater.org/

Thank you for your help and please spread the message along. It is our responsibility to take care of those who do not have access to our means. Let’s get out there and make that difference. 

What a great Gala dinner!

Thanks to everyone who came to the 4th Annual R4G Gala Dinner Saturday evening, which I'm sure many will agree was our best ever. It was a great show of support to this year's team and the organization. Many thanks to those who donated the venue, the silent auction items, and everyone who helped make the event a big success. Thank you to Zack McDowell and Dr. Whitehurst-Cooke for making remarks and encouraging the team and all those present. Zack summarized very well the past, present, and future of REACH 4 Ghana, mentioning many of our key partners, and his video is below:

Announcing the 4th Annual Gala Dinner

 

REACH 4 Ghana is accepting donations through the organization Giving to Extremes. Check it our and consider donating!!!

http://givingtoextremes.org/fundraiser-login.html?view=profile&userid=1026

Spurning new education opportunities...

REACH 4 Ghana is currently hard at work with research, medical, and public health plans to make our trip a success. One of the things that our particular trip wanted to pursue was improving women's health. As a result of many different reasons (bearing down, carrying water incorrectly, obstetrical complications, diet),  researchers have noticed that pelvic floor dysfunction (the muscles that basically hold up your bladder, rectum, and uterus in women) tends to be a common problem. We decided as a group to pursue ways that we could educate our patient population in Ghana about this and involve our Physical therapy students in some exercises in "Phase 1" of the program.

We've teamed up with great resources here in Richmond, including a Physical Therapist that specializes in the pelvic floor, who is giving us the low-down on how to recognize and help these patients. Most often, lots of these problems can lead to incontinence or prolapse, and exercises can be taught to patients that they can do everyday to increase the strength of these muscles in order to improve the quality of life without medication. Fistulas from obstetrical complications will inevitably need surgery, perhaps a service that our group cannot provide, but we feel like our ability to educate women on many of these exercises would be a worthwhile endeavor and are working hard to create screening protocols and create a physical therapy tutorial while we're in our clinic week.

Fun Fact!

#1 The fact of the day has to do with the Ewe language, the language spoken in southeastern Ghana and southern Togo by over 3 million people! Ewe is a tonal language, meaning that pitch is very important in the meaning of a word. For example, in Ewe the following three words differ only in their tones:

• tó 'mountain' (High tone)
• tǒ 'mortar' (Rising tone)
• tò 'buffalo' (Low tone)

#2 Ewe is a national language in Ghana and Togo. 

#3 Ewe is a subject-verb-object language (just like English!). The possessive comes before the head noun (sound familiar?). Ewe uses postpositions rather than prepositions. 

Vaccinations

At our last meeting we had a guest speaker from student health discuss with us some of the health concerns and vaccinations we'll need for our trip including yellow fever and possibly typhoid, tetanus, menactra and influenza. I'm not looking forward to my vaccines, but that means we're that much closer to Ghana!

Diving in Head First

     Preparations are well underway for our 2014 trip, scheduled to commence on June 5th and end June 23rd to be based out of Ho, Ghana. Local villages that have been frequented in the past include Adigbo torn, Akpafu todzi, Goviefe todzi, Logba horlikope, and Peki agbateh.
   
     Our medical team is busy preparing for the in-country needs of our clinic weeks. Residents from the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System will be assisting us in-country as we travel to rural villages without health communities already in place. We will be partnering with our friends from Irani Brothers and Company Ltd and Life for the Living Medical Centre (LILIMED) to aid us in procuring much needed medications, supplies and clinic expertise, respectively. Additionally, this year, we've made contact with VCU's undergraduate chapter of United2Heal, an organization that procures various medical supplies via donations from the VCU Health System Hospital in order to send them to countries in need. Mohamed Ibrahim, a REACH 4 Ghana team member, was the founder and serving president of United2Heal while in undergraduate before he attended medical school. In honor of Mohamed's memory and in an effort to continue to do the intercultural and humanitarian work he was so passionate about, we are honored to have created a partnership with the organization that meant so much to him.
     Our Public Health committee recently met to establish various different criteria for our in-country teaching sessions. We've brainstormed various different lesson plans for Children ages 6-18 and have also planned engaging activities for students to learn about sanitation, malaria prevention, the important of brushing teeth and washing hands, and STD and HIV education. Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of this is to make our lessons culturally competent and sustainable. For example, if we teach nutrition to children but they have no access to the types of food we lecture on, our efforts are for naught. We are continuing to seek resources for ways in which we can make our lessons relevant, needed, and local-resources focused.
     We are so lucky to have the added benefit of our board for their immense guidance and help as we construct the bones of what our trip will look like. Shikha, Miki, Katie, Jeremy, and the rest of the REACH 4 Ghana team and previous team members have had no shortcoming of positive affirmations and organizational skills that are helping to streamline our preparation process to make this trip even more successful.

Our Cultural Committee recently shared this quote of a Ghanian-American Philosopher that said that “Cultures are made of continuities and changes, and the identity of a society can survive through these changes. Societies without change aren't authentic; they're just dead” 
― Kwame Anthony Appiah

Reflecting on this, as we aim to make positive changes in the lives of others, we are constantly humbled by the generosity and positive contributions that others are constantly making on our own lives and the beginning of our own medical and health-oriented careers. 

Stay tuned for more updates about our DRUM CIRCLE DINNER and our Gala in the spring! 

REACH Sweatshirts

The wait is over!!! The sweatshirt order is in! Distribution is scheduled between 12:15 and 2:15 tomorrow, January 17th 2014 in the MMEC lobby. See you there, or feel free to contact any team member to set up another pickup time. 

Drum Circle Dinner in 2.5 weeks!

Advertising continues strong for the annual REACH 4 Ghana Drum Circle Dinner. There’s only two and a half weeks left to order your tickets; get them while you can!!!

http://www.reach4ghana.org/store/p3/R4G_Drum_Circle_Dinner_2014.html 

Meet Karen and Qasim!

We have two new members joining the team this year: Karen and Qasim, both are M1 students. Can't wait to start working with them. Welcome to the REACH 2014 family Karen and Qasim!

DRUM CIRCLE DINNER!!!

We are pleased to announce the 4th Annual REACH 4 Ghana Drum Circle Dinner! We hope you can join us in celebrating Ghanaian food and culture, while learning about the health needs of the Volta Region.

When: 31 Jan, 6 - 8 PM

Where: MCV Alumni House

Tickets: $10 pre / $12 at the door

(If you prefer to pay with cash/check and no online fee, no problem, please contact 2014r4g@gmail.com)

Meet the 2014 Team

The official blog welcome to the 2014 team is past due...they have already been hard at work, with several team meetings and the team photo under their belt.

2014 Team Page

Interest Meeting

The 2014 Interest Meeting for Medical Students will be held on Tuesday, Aug 27, from 4 to 5:30 in the Learning Theater of the MMEB. Please join us as we discuss REACH 4 Ghana and hear about the other international trips at VCU as well!

The End of the Beginning

It's hard to believe that our trip is quickly coming to an end. Three of our teammates left directly from today's clinic to head to Accra, and the rest of us are leaving at 4:30 AM tomorrow to make it in time for a series of flights starting at 10 AM and ending with the last person leaving at 10:45 PM. It's going to be a long day of traveling, but those of us with later flights are excited to have the day to explore Accra and the cultural market. We have one last team dinner tonight, and we'll be packing up all the medical supplies and donations we brought with us this evening- after that, all our official R4G 2013 tasks are complete, and we'll just be focused on enjoying our last hours in Ghana and making sure everyone gets home safely! 

In addition to being the last day of the trip, today was the last day of our five clinics, and it was a generally difficult day. It was alternately extremely hot and heavily downpouring, several of the shelters built in the village collapsed during clinic hours, and we just couldn't keep up with the number of patients seeking medical care. It was an exercise in management, quick thinking, and tamping down personal needs and emotions in an attempt to focus one others in need. I don't think our team did it perfectly, but we managed exceedingly well given the circumstances. We were able to see most of the patients waiting (nearly 200 patients in 6 hours), and the remaining 40-50 will be seen by a Ghanaian physician and Lillimed Clinic volunteers next Wednesday using supplies donated by R4G. 

Last night we had the opportunity to have dinner with Dr. Victor Agbeibor, the family medicine attending physician at St. Francis who traveled to Ghana with the Bon Secours residents this week. The dinner itself was the usual medley of goat stew, a veggie option, and a million bowls of french fries, but the conversation was inspiring. Dr. Victor is originally from the Volta region (where we have been working in Ghana), attended medical school in Russia, and is currently working in Richmond and traveling internationally for medical missions whenever possible. His short speech was funny and poignant, but his message was serious, direct, and clear: this trip is not the end of our global work as future healthcare providers. 

It has become exceedingly clear to me over the past few weeks that the amount of work left to be done in the field of global health in developing countries is immense. The message we received last night is that coming to Ghana for three weeks does not give us the right to check off a box on our to-do list that reads "International Aid." We have a duty and a responsibility to continue the work we've started here, and as REACH 4 Ghana continues to develop and grow as an organization, the results of our work and the relationships we are fostering between our countries will grow. This isn't the end- it's the end of the beginning.

We can't thank you all enough for your support, encouragement, donations, and love over the past year, and I hope you'll all keep reading as we continue to share our thoughts, reflections, frustrations, and ideas for the future after we get back home. 

~ Shikha

Audrey taking one of our younger patient's height and waist circumference.

Soccer, Skirts, and Starting Clinic- 3 Days in Pictures

Free time has been sparse around here the past few days as we've been spending most of our time planning for this week's clinics. The first two days had their share of challenges, but were overall hugely successful, and I couldn't be more impressed by the team's dedication, teamwork, boundless energy, and true compassion for our patients. 

Because I only have 19 minutes before the internet cafe closes shop, here's life lately in Ghana via photos:

Katya, Sarah, Audrey, Max and Katie sorting donated medications and supplies into boxes for the five villages in which we'll be setting up clinics.

Medical students on the trip hanging out at a hotel situated on one of the highest points in Ho (the city we're living in)- we had an amazing view of the entire city.

The 2013 R4G men showing off their Sunday best before we attended a church service in Ho. The entire team performed a medley of Lean on Me and I Believe I Can Fly (I mostly mouthed the words, don't worry.)

The ladies showing off the skirts we had made over the past week- we each selected our fabrics and had our skirts custom-fitted for us!

Our football (soccer) players looking fierce before our match against the Ghanaian police academy.

Post-match. We lost, but it was a valiant effort!

The team handing over all of our donated medications to Lillimed, the clinic in Ho helping us to set up the mobile clinics in all five villages.

Hanging out with some of our favorite kids after clinic in Adigbo Kofe- they LOVED the funny faces!

Sorry for the sparse post, but expect some interesting reflections on the first few days of clinic as well as some guest posts from other team members in the next few days!

~ Shikha

On Guilt

Guilt is a unique emotion in that it is both selfless and selfish at the same time. It is simultaneously enlightening and debilitating, clarifying and obscuring. Visiting a developing country like Ghana while calling an immensely wealthy nation like the United States home is the perfect breeding ground for guilt to take root, multiply, and, if we’re not careful, spread like a cancer to the degree that accomplishing anything other than wallowing in it seems like an insurmountable task. We teach children about food and nutrition when they don’t have access to the healthy foods we discuss. We encourage hand washing with soap and clean water when soap is considered a luxury. We talk about first aid and germs when most of our students don’t have access to bandages and antiseptic cream. Perhaps most obviously, we sit in a classroom and eat a hearty lunch prepared for us at a restaurant while malnourished students without lunches play outside just steps away from us.

Students in Adigbo Kofe as classes ended for the day and we prepared to board the bus.

It has never been clearer to me that we have it easy- we live the good life, and most of us have never truly wanted for anything that could be considered a necessity of life. This is something I have taken for granted my entire life, and I probably will continue to expect it even after I return from Ghana. There are days when the guilt is somewhat assuaged, but still it lingers; its presence is a constant, dull reminder of privilege and of circumstance. Yesterday Katie, Kristina and I tried to help a young girl with a high fever, dizziness, and a throat and stomach ache. She hadn’t eaten in two days, and she hadn’t taken any medicine for her fever. In less than five minutes, she was eating a plate of rice and drinking water taken from the team’s lunch, and we gave her half an Aleve taken from my personal medication store. For a brief moment, there was a sense of accomplishment and hope that the little girl would get better, and that, in part, it would be because of our efforts. But those emotions were quickly replaced with yet another wave of guilt- why were the rice and water so readily available to me and not her? Why do I have seemingly endless access to medications when people in this girl’s village die because of a deceptively innocuous-seeming fever? At the end of the day, it just doesn’t seem fair- so the guilt lingers.

One of the team's favorite kindergarteners as the students played games and waited for their government-subsidized lunches. It is never a guarantee in these villages that the meals will actually be delivered, so the students often go without a meal during the school day.

Last night at dinner, I asked the team to share their most challenging moment or aspect of the trip thus far. Guilt was an oft-repeated motif that wove its way through each of my teammates brief speeches in a way that nearly broke my heart. I sat at a table with 16 brilliant, motivated, passionate people who truly want to effect change, but they couldn’t see past the guilt to their own accomplishments and overwhelming successes with the students who welcomed us into their schools with open arms and beaming faces over the past week. So I decided not to let the guilt overtake us- how could I let the dark side of guilt overshadow the brightness and light of the pure love for humanity that exists in each member of my team? Yes, we are privileged. Yes, it is unjust and almost cruelly unfair at times. Yes, a certain degree of guilt offers perspective and maintains balance. But (and this is a big, important but) we are making the deliberate choice to use that cruelly unfair privilege to equalize the global playing field to the best of our abilities. Slowly but surely, as more of our peers, mentors, and successors in our respective fields recognize the need for this equalization, the guilt will begin to dissipate. For now, I’ll settle for the ever-present guilt taking a backseat to the other emotions I think my team deserves to feel as our week of public health education draws to a close- jubilation, empathy, sadness, a sense of purpose and, above all, hopefulness for the future. 

The future.

~ Shikha