Pakistan

For the week of Jan 6-Jan 13, I did a current needs assessment of the cases in Jabri. This involved preparing a reporting form for the various cases we were seeing per week, instructing the dispenser to use it correctly and putting a system into place for reporting alerts to WHO, UNICEF and the District Department of Health, Mansehra. For the first time since relief operations began, medical surveillance data has been reported from Jabri.

The other update is that a doctor has been hired, we have prepared the contract and will sign it today, hopefully. The situation at Jabri remains bad. Today, there were 2 cases of acute fever with bleeding. Could be hemorrhagic fever or a complication of malaria. The doctor was supposed to be deployed yesterday but he hadn't returned from his village yet from the Eid holidays. Everything here takes 10 times longer. I'm going to accompany him to Jabri myself to make sure things fall into place.

The other big challenge will be to make sure that everything we talk about in the proposal is implemented properly. Someone has to be over there keeping watch to make sure this happens. While I'm here, I can do this. Hopefully, all the pieces will fall into place as we get funding for the various components in the project.