Calvary greetings and a very blissful and restful Easter Holiday to you all. The fisrt quarter of the year was full of activities both at our center and in the community. We hope and pray everyone is very fine, safe, and sound these Easter Holidays!
It is worrying to see how people are dying in great numbers in the community and in hospitals here with the Covid 19 virus. We have so many patients who are on oxygen who are striving to survive while so many others are dying. We also don’t have medicines in the hospitals so those who are rushing there are dying. According to a national daily Covid report, we are recording a total number of not less than 500 Covid and Covid related deaths while the daily infection rates are standing at 1,500 and above per day. The most affected are elderlies aging from 60 years and above and those of us with a history of communicable and/or non-communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure or heart diseases. The only hope for us is Covid vaccines that are not even expected to come to any time soon and this is very very worrying to us!
We are so worried at the swing at which people are dying of this virus here because our country is small with a small national population of about 17 million people. We are just praying that Covax, Astrazeneca, or Pfizer vaccines come soon so that we can safeguard our lives from this vicious pandemic. We do not know what will become of our country if this pandemic continues. Stigma and discrimination is also so high. You cannot sneeze or cough without people passing a comment or complaining; even if you have a mask in the bus, people can manhandle you and chuck you out of it. So when you develop a common cold it is better to stay home otherwise you will not like what people will do to you.
People are not working here and there is no money in circulation because of Covid and we are suffering a lot here. Many companies have closed and investors have gone back to their countries leaving people jobless.
Let us continue to pray and commit our lives and our wonderful families in the safety hands of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is all-powerful. He is more than able to avert this COVID pestilence that has befallen us. Our God is all-knowing and is in control. Let us just continue to exalt Him in prayer and supplication. COVID will pass away very soon, only if we can pray and ask Him for forgiveness. The book of 2 Chronicles 7:14 in the Bible says that if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and turn away from their wicked ways then, I the Lord will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land. It is in critical moments like this one that we all have to turn to God wholeheartedly for our forgiveness and our healing and healing will come. Unless that is done, we are likely to stay in this situation with so many people dying from TB, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, high blood pressure, and now Covid 19 virus.
WORLD TB DAY PREPARATION AND COMMEMORATION
We are so delighted to inform you that we were able to take part in this year’s World TB Day commemoration on 24th March 2021 at Kaunda Square in Kitwe Town Centre!
This year’s World TB Day commemoration was well-organized and all the preparatory meetings were being convened at KDHO from the first meeting that we held on Monday 8th March, up to the last meeting on Monday 22nd March 2021.
We discussed and resolved that each individual organization was supposed to buy and print their own T/shits, a TB Banner showing the name and details of a participating organization, the Theme for this year’s World TB Day Commemoration which was coined by UNAIDS and World Health Organisation - WHO as “The Clock is Ticking”. We were also told to come with our own brochures which we were distributing to the people at the commemoration.
World TB Day Commemoration Regalia
However, instead of buying and printing 20 T/shirts for our participating staff members and volunteers in our organisation CAM this year, we decided to do something different. We came up with the idea of regalia to wear during the commemoration that would be affordable but beautiful and unique at the same time. . My wife Bernadotte came up with the idea and we went to one of the shops in town where we bought a 40 meter sheet of plain white cloth, and she sewed a total of 20 plain white shirts with her sewing machine and later put CAM badges and the theme and other details for the World TB Day commemoration and they looked fantabulous!
We later advised her to use part of the remaining material to make a banner which she successfully did and sewed 40 face masks that we wore at the commemoration. By using this formula, we were incredibly able to cut down the cost on regalia by 50 per cent, spectacular! Bernadette is now a very experienced tailor who is sewing most of our clothes at home including our children’s school uniforms. Her skill will help us in our organisation.
Transport
Transport was provided to us by Copperbelt Health Education Project – CHEP. CHEP hired a bus that carried all of us together with other organizations such as Bwafwano Care to the venue at Kaunda square and back to our various organizations, we never spent any money on transport on this program this year Praise God.
Hand Sanitizers
The Ministry of Health of Zambia under Kitwe District Health Office donated and distributed hand Sanitizers to all the organizations that came to this commemoration, no organisation spent any money on hand sanitizers for this program this year.
Delegates
The officials, who were there, were officials from the newly appointed Minister of Health from Lusaka Dr. Jonas Chanda, the Kitwe District Director of Health Doctor Mukupa, and many other officials from KDHO and local organizations from Kitwe district.
In his speech, the representative from the Minister of Health assured us that at national level, Zambia has made great strides in line of our theme for this year but he, however, said that our achievements are now being relegated and overshadowed by the novel coronavirus pandemic where much of our attention and resources have been diverted. He said that the Coronavirus has brought a lot of negative impact on TB and HIV/AIDS programming and mitigation. And for this reason let us all work together to disseminate timely information and messages on Covid 19 prevention among TB and HIV/AIDS patients in the communities where we operate from. Let us all endeavor to continue to do all the necessary works that we have been doing in the area of TB prevention, treatment, care and support. Let us continue to conduct intensified TB case findings, TB defaulter and contact tracing and many other good works that we do in this fight that we have launched against TB to manage to eliminate it by the year 2030. He said unlike other diseases, TB is cured, therefore let us do what we can do as much as possible to ensure that patient are commenced on treatment and complete their full 6 months course in order to be cured. He also said that Multi-drug resistance and extensively drug resistance tuberculosis is also on the increase in the community and let us all guard against it.
On the coronavirus he said that let us all continue to mask up, observe social distances and avoid nonessential travels and overcrowded places as much as possible as there is also another wave of the coronavirus in Zambia and the vaccines are not expected to come any time soon. But as a government, we will continue to commit ourselves and our resources towards the elimination of the coronavirus in our nation.
It was such a rejuvenating and a reuniting moment as TB/HIV/AIDS civil society organizations in Kitwe and we were so encouraged.
MEETING WITH THE KITWE DISTRICT HEALTH OFFICE TO OPEN A MINI TB LABOLATORY AT OUR CENTER
Great news! We now have a WiFi at our center and we have an unlimited access to the internet! We would like to inform you that CAM and the ministry of Health - KDHO are working together to open a simple mini-TB Laboratory at our center Doctor Elizabeth Rini Medical Center at Buchi TB/Chest clinic in Buchi!
On Monday 15th March last month, DHO invited us to attend a meeting to deliberate how this project will be done. The District Director of Health, the Deputy Director of Health, the Kitwe District TB Coordinator, the lab technicians and many other officials were also in attendance. The district Director of health Dr. Mukupa said that the Ministry of Health and the government of Zambia under the able leadership of His Excellency President Edgar Chagwa Lungu have the mandate to provide quality health care services to as many people as possible without leaving anyone behind even in very difficult times like this Covid 19 era that we are going through as a country, we cannot relent in providing quality health care services to our citizenries.
The Director said the ministry will really appreciate if we can work together to open this lab at the Chest Clinic. He said that there is a sudden surge of TB cases and associated deaths in Kitwe district now and that this lab once opened would benefit and save so many lives of TB patients in our district. He said that patients have started finding it very difficult and cumbersome to be notified at the TB clinic and later referred to another health facility such as Buchi clinic and Kitwe central hospital instead of doing notification, diagnosis, and treatment at the same place at Buchi TB clinic. He said that they lose a lot of TB cases through this process as a district and they would like this problem to come to an end. He said the Ministry of Health is ready to work with us in this area because CAM has an already built structure at the chest clinic that can be used for a laboratory there.
He said that in this collaboration, the Ministry of Health will be able to provide human resource personnel who are trained as Laboratory Technicians that the ministry will attach to this Laboratory who will be able to do laboratory tests and supervisory work at this lab. Therefore, the Ministry has requested us to source and restock this laboratory with:
(i) A Microscope
(ii) Test Tubes
(iii) Chemicals and TB reagents
(iv) 1 Small Refrigerator – where certain reagents and testing chemicals will be kept
(v) Laboratory coats, gowns, Plastic aprons coveralls for a Lab Technician
(vi) Goggles to wear by a Lab Technician during testing
(vii) 5 wooden Tables on which to conduct experiments
(viii) Storage shelves
(ix) 10 Clamp stands
(x) 2 Air conditioners to recondition the laboratory
(xi) A Ceiling Board.
(xii) Footwear
(xiii) Face shields
(xiv) Respirators and
(xv) Gloves
These are the items and devices that we need to restock this mini-Laboratory at the center. It is such a very wonderful idea to set this mini-laboratory at our medical center. It is relevant and vital at the Chest clinic and to all the clients who come there for all TB screening and notifications in Kitwe district! We are working well with the nurses at the clinic who are also accompanying us in the community during visitations.
This time we are strategically working so very hard to ensure that CAM is up and running and begin to respond to some of the salient needs of the people. The District Director Dr. Mukupa is so delighted with our work and is lobbying for us to politicians like our Area Councilor and our area Member of Parliament who also acts as a Minister of Finance to also come to our aid to ensure that we receive support to have this lab established at our center and many other activities that CAM does to help TB and HIV/AIDS clients at the center and all the 7 communities where we operate from.
By God’s grace, we have also partnered with Doctor Mary Banda who works as a gynecologist at Kitwe Central Hospital! She is now a volunteer with us, and we are so grateful to her and the AFLA network!!! Thanks to her we now have an ultrasound machine for pregnancy scanning in our center. We are of the view that we will be charging a minimum amount of money for pregnancy tests and pregnancy scanning with our Ultrasound machine like what Mrs. Mwansa and AFLA do at their center Silent Voices. We will also consider to charge a minimum amount of money for TB Laboratory TB tests and this will be able to help us raise income to maintain the Laboratory and meet some of the administrative expenses of our Pregnancy recourse center. This income will also be able to help us buy and distribute other food items such as mealie meal, kapenta, beans and cooking oil to our TB clients in the community. We foresee this to be a great innovation that will also begin to help us raise income to sustain our organization on a monthly basis!