- A huge THANK YOU to all of our friends & family who have generously contributed to our trip's funds. With your support, we have raised over $1,550 - all of which will go toward the purchase of medical supplies we will bring with us to use and distribute to patients during our community health outreaches in the Ashanti region of Ghana.
- Omaha non-for-profit organization First Sight has generously donated an eye exam kit to our group. This awesome kit contains 100 eye glass frames, 200 different types of lenses, and all the equipment needed to conduct an eye exam so we can fit children and adults with a pair of glasses (all in less than 15 minutes!). The First Sight kit contains all the necessary tools to help correct average vision problems for people who have minor single farsightedness, nearsightedness, or astigmatism. Check out First Sight's website, with more details on the kit we will be bringing with us here: http://www.firstsighteyeglasses.com/product/
- We have arranged two days in Ghana where we will partner with NGO Unite for Sight (http://www.uniteforsight.org/) to provide eye care in remote rural villages. We will be assisting Ghanaian ophthalmic nurses and optometrists to take patient history, test visual acuity, observe & conduct eye examinations, distribute medication and eyeglasses prescribed by the eye nurse, and provide eye health education. We will also get the chance to observe sight-restoring surgeries provided by the ophthalmologists at Friends Eye Centre in Tamale, Ghana.
- We have also organized a tour of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana's capital city, Accra. Korle-Bu Hospital is the only tertiary hospital in the Southern part of Ghana and is affiliated with the University of Ghana Medical School. We are very much looking forward to the opportunity to learn how medical education is conducted in Ghana, and to compare our experiences to the Ghanaian medical students!
- Our group is also in the process of designing a research study investigating the high prevalence of Typhoid fever in Saboba, Ghana. In previous years, there have been attempts to reduce the incidence of this disease by providing the medical staff at the Saboba Medical Centre with educational tools to teach their patients about the risk factors of typhoid. Our group is interested in continuing this study in order to learn if these educational tools are still being used by the medical staff, and if so, to what effect typhoid education is having on the incidence and prevalance of this disease in Saboba. There is a lot of work still needed to be done designing this project - but we hope this research will lead to a better understanding of how public health education can be beneficial and effective in a community.
- Lastly, Project CURA's primary fundraising event, Savor the Flavor, was a great success! We had an attendance of over 200 Creighton students, faculty, and community members! Each trip prepared a dish local to the cuisine of the country they will be traveling to this summer, and the food was outstanding. Our group made fried plantains, a popular Ghanaian snack, and the buffet line was full of other delicious foods including red-red stew (Ghana), chicken curry (India), spring rolls (Vietnam), goulash (Romania), and more. Project CURA also was able to raise funds through an extensive silent auction & raffle, which included items such as Creighton Men's Basketball season tickets, hand made crafts & jewelry from around the world, gift certificates to Omaha restaurants and businesses, and much much more! Our group put together a poster board with information about our trip, and we were able to talk to many attendees about what we will be doing.
 |
| The group in front of our poster at Savor the Flavor |
No comments:
Post a Comment