Day 3: Back to School

One of the major issues in Ghana is that there is not much motivation for parents to send their children to school. People, who live in the villages especially, are not worried about learning, they’re worried about what they will eat for dinner.  Sending a child to school means one less set of hands to work in the fields and thus, less income. 

Faith Roots International Academy (FRIA) is the school here at CORM.  All of the CORM kids go as well as several kids from around the community. It is the third most prestigious school in the greater Accra region. They used to use an American school system but then had a lot of problems when the students had to take the Ghanaian tests. The Ghanaian tests follow a Ghanaian teaching style so FRIA switched their curriculum. This has worked out better since pretty much all of them will continue with higher education in Ghana.  The older kids go to school from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. The school day used to be from 8 A.M. to 3 P.M.; however, students didn’t perform well on their tests last year so their school days were extended for extra studying. 

After spending some time at the school, I walked over to Doctor Troy’s house to assist him. The doctor’s office/clinic is currently held out of Troy’s house in a spare bedroom while the clinic is being built.  One of the tasks orchestrated by the clinic is to monitor the kids weights  and heights to ensure they’re growing steadily.  Today I entered several of the kids' statistics into the computer to try and move towards a paperless database. Every child that I entered was underweight. Later this week we’ll be doing more health screenings to get more statistics on each child.

One issue that goes hand in hand with malnutrition is sickle cell anemia. This is when the blood cells are crescent shape and thus get clotted a lot easier.  These blood clots will often lead to a stroke which is what happened with one younger girl here when she was three. Because of the stroke, she walks on the left side of her left foot. Her leg sort of bends out sideways because of this. She has gotten so accustomed to walking like this.  Doctor Troy and I are planning to start physical therapy with her so that eventually she can be walking on the bottom of her foot. 

I asked doctor Troy how prevalent HIV is here in Ghana. He said it’s definitely an issue and hard to get under control. HIV prescriptions are not sold in pharmacies because if they were, then any HIV positive person could buy them. If they buy them on their own then they may not take their medication correctly. If not taken correctly, their body will build up a resistance.  Then, HIV will continue to spread because it will recognize this medicine next time they take it (with the resistance) and fight it off. Eventually, treatable HIV medicines will run out. However, people who are HIV positive are not getting their medicine because it is not available by prescription and they don’t want to go to clinics regularly.  Thus, the problem is hard to control.