In the summer of 2006, Jane Kimani travelled to Kimuchu village in Kenya to conduct screening for diabetes and hypertension. With 2 nurses, one health educator and a few volunteers, we were able to screen over 200 participants not including children. Most participants were women in different age blackets.
The screening was heavily advertised in the local churches, and to our amazement, people started arriving at the screening station around 7:00am in the morning. We had requested the villagers not to take their breakfast so we can screen for the fasting blood sugars. We started by registering them and taking their demographic information which is essential for data analysis. After a couple of hours we had completed checking the participants blood glucose levels and their blood pressure. The second phase of the screening was to educate the people on disease management, and life style changes to reduce or delay chronic diseases.
After looking at the data, it was evident that they was a dire need for more screening, health education and referrals. There were a few people who were diabetic and hypertensive without their knowledge since they were never screened before. Others knew they had the conditions but did not know the right kind of food to eat. After the screening an elderly woman asked me “now that you have screened us, what about the medications?” For my future screenings, I knew I had to do more than the screening.
Diabetes and hypertensive medications are not offered free at the hospitals, unlike US, most people do not have health insurance especially the underserved communities in the rural areas. Screening and leaving them knowing there are sick with no medications would actually do them more harm, and therefore I was determined to do more in my future screenings.
Data showed that more women were hypertensive than men, and overall higher number of people had one or both conditions. Uhai for Health Inc. will continue to work in this village to find out why there are high incident rates of chronic diseases in this village.