Charts

Dr. Bjorn Nilson worked on making these charts the better part of the weekend. They contain truly revealing and fascinating information. I think you will find them self explanatory.

Sunday!

Well it is Sunday here and that means Church. It takes the better part of a day by the time you talk to everyone and eat. Usually the church serves a great Thai lunch after service. The Barefoot Drs. are all devoted Christians and often sing songs. Today they sang a beautiful song at church. They are quite good singers in addition to everything else they do. The theme at church today was “Growing in God’s Wisdom.” I found this very fitting for the Barefoot Drs. as they are here to learn medicine but also the Bible and its teachings. In this way they are equipped to heal people physically and spiritually. In a country like Myanmar there are just as many spiritual injuries as physical. In areas of war, drug running, forced labor, and sex trafficking many of the injuries are not of the physical nature. Their country sees far more of these horrors than we can possibly relate to. All the more reason that treating the whole person, both spiritual and physical, is so desperately important.

The main verses today were Isaiah 55:8-9 and James 3:13-18. In Isaiah 55: 8-9 it reads, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.” Says the Lord. “ For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” This is a good verse to remember for our students. It reminds us that we cannot possibly understand some of the things we see happen on this earth but that does not mean there is no God. It only means that we are not that God and should not expect to understand all things as He does. All right, enough of your sermon for the day.

I have also included some more pictures from last week that I thought were good. In them you see the Barefoot Dr students have laid out object that

symbolize some of the worst problems they have

seen in the villages over this last year. It is no surprise that at the top of the list is “Bad Water.” Second is bad roads and bridges particularly during the rainy season. If the transportation is cut off that can be very serious to a village, meaning no supplies can get in or out. Third is “ difficulty getting water”. Fourth was “Mosquitoes.” Of course there is a

much larger list but we picked out the top four to discuss last week.

We should have stats up for you all soon so keep checking in.

Peace be with you all today.

Rick Astone

The First week of the Barefoot Doctors final year of training has been completed. We thank CHE and the excellent training the students received. A special thank you to David Crist and Chhuanna who “facilitated” the training. In a survey we took on Friday afternoon almost all the class said they would change some things in their community projects from last year now that they have had the beginning CHE training. That tells us it was a worthwhile experience for all of them. They learned some important techniques on how to prepare for entering a new relationship with a village and how to prepare for community projects.

For example, one technique is to write a calendar for that village. This would include what the weather is like month to month in that area, what is happening with the rice crop and agriculture each month, any festivals, patterns in illness like malaria, or anything else related to times of the year. Dr. Nilson and I also learned from this exercise and it helped us better understand the circumstances the students face. For instance, when written on a calendar it is clear to see you do not want to travel during the rainy season because the roads get bad or even impassable, the mosquitoes get worse and the instance of malaria goes way up! In some of those areas if a road gets washed out they may not be able to get supplies in or out for weeks or months! That means if you are in the village you have to stay in that area and they may not be able to get food or medicine in. There is no assistance from their government so they just have to deal with it.

We also collected all their patient logbooks and are in the process of sifting through the data. It is extremely interesting and we hope to share some of our findings next week. More than half of them saw more than a 100 patients in the last year alone! And this is before they are graduates of the program. Imagine how much more effective they will be in years to come. Most of them also worked on community development or education projects, as well, to make a real and lasting positive change in the villages. Not bad for all volunteer health care workers! I know many of you are like me and love to see statistics so we will post them when we get the data cleaned up a bit.

Today is Saturday here and Dr. Nilson and I are busy catching up on computer work, organizational issues, and going through the recently collected log book data from the students. The log book information will help us fine-tune the program to their real life needs based on their actual experiences over the last year. Through this we know how many patients they saw, what age ranges, sex, and what diagnosis they gave them. We also know what medication and how often they used it. This will help us teach and prepare them for their specific needs and help us be better prepared for future classes.

Sawadee Krap (Thai salutation)

Rick Astone

Barefoot Doctors Training 2012 has started!

The Barefoot Dr training school has began! This is the third and final year for this group of Barefoot Dr. Students. Amazingly, all 26 of them have been able to return this year. Last year two could not make it down to Thailand. One because she was pregnant and the other because there was too much snow over the rough mountain trails she needed to cross on foot to get to the nearest town with an airport.

Dr. Bjorn Nilson and myself arrived safely in Chiang Mai on Sat and are well on our way to being adjusted to our jet lag. However, I am writing this Blog at 5:00 am and I have been wide-awake since 4:00 am. We will remain here to run the program for the entire 6 weeks of the medical portion of this training. We have been busy getting organized the last two days while a two man team of “CHE” trainers is doing most of the teaching. Despite all the planning ahead of time, some things cannot be anticipated or dealt with until we are here on the ground and face to face with people. “FLC” has been helping us get everything up and running. As we debrief the Barefoot Dr students we will finalize the teaching curriculum for this final year of training. That way we can tailor the teaching to their real life needs and wants of training based on what they have actually seen in their areas. This may be quite different for different students because they are scattered across Myanmar in a variety of settings. Some are in high mountains, others are in the lowlands, and a few are in poor towns with little or no health care.

What is “CHE?”

This first week of training is mostly CHE (Community Health Education). This is a well-respected approach to helping communities in need in a responsible way. CHE has been around many years and has helped many charitable organization be more effective and responsible in how they help. CHE focuses on the entire person. It addresses the physical and spiritual and is focused on prevention. It trains people how to help a community help itself rather than just doing it for them. The result of this approach is a much more lasting and empowering effect. So this week is really about leadership training and how to be effective at their Barefoot Drs work. CHE has time-tested, creative teaching techniques for developing communities where many of the people may be illiterate. For example, they use a lot of visual and interactive techniques, role-playing and skits, breaking into small groups and students taking turns writing answers on the large paper board in front of the room. CHE also encourages the students come up with the answers themselves, and the facilitator just guides the line of questions. It is amazingly effective and makes sense, but it is very different than how we do things in the west. You can see in these pictures some of this teaching in the first two days of class. It is Wednesday morning here now and we are off to another day of CHE.

Thank you all for your support.

That is all for now, Sincerely Rick Astone.