Kitare Health Center

After an introduction to Sindo, we piled into the back of the FACES vehicle to head to Kitare, one of the CCSP peripheral sites. A few detours to drop off lab results at other facilities and 4.5 hours after we left this morning, we arrived at Kitare where our day’s activities began. Unfortunately all the people who were originally trained to do the cervical cancer screening have been transferred to other facilities. So instead of supervising and mentoring the staff, we pulled out a box of back up supplies and did the screenings ourselves. We saw eight patients in a few hours. Most were nervous about the exam, but also curious to know more about cervical cancer and grateful for the screening service. We just need to figure out how to make the screening available all day everyday, not just when the supervising staff can come out once a month! Screening at this site was going great initially and then just dropped off entirely because of lack of trained staff. Just one example of how difficult it is to build a sustainable program. We’ll get there though.