What this first Trachoma survey of such a big magnitude in Malawi?

Well for an eye survey with large number of people such as this; may be it’s the first one in Malawi. This time we had nine vehicles and a total number of 30 people .Small surveys have been done in the past in Chikwawa, Nsanje and Salima .You can clear see that during the training of the teams thee were many people. Prof Robin Bailey from London school of Hygiene and tropical Medicine ,UK and Dr Sam Abbenyi from International Trachoma initiative(ITI ), New York USA were the two external people that joined us during the survey. It was a fantastic experience for all of us.

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When did Trachoma Survey in Malawi start ?

The external facilitators form the UK and USA arrived in Malawi during the last week of July 2008 ;and we had training of the team from 28th July-1nd August .They were 9 paired teams of clinical officers (18 in total ) and each team had a supervisor. We piloted the research in Blantyre at Chileka Health Centre and near the surrounding villages and proceeded to data collection in Chikwawa on 2nd august (straight after the training & pilot) and stayed in Chikwawa for 8 days .we went everywhere (Chang’ambika,Chithumba,Chapanganga,Dolo,Ngabu,Nchalo,e.t.c ) faced many challenges and proceeded to mchinji on 10th of august for another 8 days of data collection . By the time we got to Mchinji the teams had a lot of experienced so it was practically a bit easier in Mchinji .Want to know what challenges we faced? I will write about them later .I should point out that this was one of the few larger studies in the Eye field that has been done in Malawi while led by a local Malawian as a Principal Investigator and I am proud to have been the one.

With a budget of over USD 50,000; Should the Trachoma survey have been done at all?
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Trachoma Prevalence survey in Malawi 2008

I have a lot to write as I have not been blogging so I do not even know where to start explaining about this survey. Anyway I am the Principal Investigator of this Research but I have been supported by expertise form the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine(LSHTM) UK ;International Trachoma Initiative (ITI),New York USA, Department of Statistics ,Chancellor College ,University of Malawi , Zomba ; College of Medicine Research Support centre and Sight Savers International Malawi country office. In particular I would like to thank Dr Tobias Chirwa from Chancellor College who worked to ensure that the questionnaires were user friendly; and Dr Linda Kalilani from Research Support Centre who agreed to manage the data. The two of you have made my life much easier .Earlier this year ( in April ) as I sat in that conference room at World Health Organisation(WHO) in Geneva Switzerland listening to the challenges our friends in Zambia had in doing such a similar study; I was wondering whether I was competent enough to be the Principal Investigator but with the support I got from various people in Malawi my work was made much easier and I am proud that the Research has gone very well. How can I forget the chairman of the National health Research committee in Malawi ;who upon hearing the urgency to do this study ;approved our proposal within 2 weeks of submission.
Well I do not know whether any of this stuff makes sense to you, but
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