yanpu's Journal

Back to the Field

Julie and I are back in Qinghai. We flew in a few days ago and have really hit the ground running. The day after we arrived we were off into the countryside starting the second part of our education program. The groundwork we had laid last year really came in handy. All the heads of the CDCs and local health departments remembered us. This time around we didn't have to jump through so many hoops to get to our final destination. Instead we were lead right to the schools. We could pretty much do as we pleased, set our own schedules. Everything has just been going so smoothly. I am so glad we spent last year really working on building relationships. It has really paid off.

The weather here is surprisingly warm and pleasant. It turns out we arrived just as the bad weather was leaving. The temperature here is a brisk 30 degrees. At such a high altitude, the strong sunlight has melted most of the snow. Last year we had heard about Qinghai's spring sand storms. Thankfully we have not had to personally experience one...yet.

For the last two days, Julie and I have been going from school to school giving HBV health education seminars to students grades 3-6th. For each of the seminars we first assessed their baseline HBV knowledge and then proceeded with the HBV class. The curriculum is pretty basic. We have4 main points:

1) We want them to know where the liver is on the body and what it does.

2) We want them to understand that the HBV virus attacks the Liver.

3) We want them to know the 2 main ways of transmission: birth and blood.The 3rd way is sex and we decided it was a little beyond their understanding.

4)We want them to know toprotect themselves from the HBV virus by getting vaccinated.

Julie and I have devised, I think, creative ways to teach the kids the information. We have an HBV song which is set to the tune of farajaka. Wehave an activity where the kids can stick cut out body organs onto a paper body. We also encouraged a lot of participation during the class by asking the kids to help teach the class using their own de scriptions of ways of transmission and what the liver does. It's been really fun watching these kids learn and interact with each other. At first they were quit shy, but after we pulled out a couple of prizes such as pencils and pens, the participation dramatically increased!

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of the project will be just as smooth!