Compassion Outreach

Yesterday the clinic did an outreach to help some of the local kids who are sponsored by Compassion International.  We measured height and weight and did general health evaluations for 205 children.  Since I have a Compassion child in Ethiopia, I was really eager to participate and see how Compassion does things.  It was an overwhelming but gratifying day.

There was an army of children.  And they were all dressed in matching uniforms.  It was a bit disconcerting to walk into the church yard and just see so many hundreds of matching children.  The clinic was surprisingly orderly though, the kids were incredibly cooperative and patient.  Some waited from 9am until 3pm to be seen and they just sat quietly on benches for most of that time.

Christine and I were in charge of measuring height and weight.  After measuring all the children, we calculated all the relevant ratios and percentiles according to their age.  Most of them were very, very thin, so it did not come as a surprise that few of them were above the 20th percentile for their age.  Several of them had HIV.

The children who had identified health issues (underweight, skin issues, coughs, etc) will now be scheduled for appointments at the clinic in coming weeks.  So it benefits both Compassion and PMI.

As usual, it poured.  So we had to quickly move our operations under an overhang after lunch and then make our way home on muddy roads which had turned into rivers.  Overall, though, it was a great day.  The day was exactly the sort of event that gets my Public Health energies flowing.