I'm going to tell you a story that sounds crazy to me but it might not sound crazy to you. If that's the case, apologies in advance.
There are very few hospitals in Haiti, and given how rural the population is, most people's access to health care is at a rural health center that often has no water or electricity, much less medical supplies. In many cases people are afraid to access counselling services for things like family planning for fear that they will be judged by health workers. In other cases, people have no idea that they can go to health centers for these services. We have a radio drama on the air to encourage younger women use a modern form of family planning and to seek advice from a health professional before trying family planning.
Last night I met up with the visiting director of an NGO that produces radio and TV serial dramas with social and environmental messages, especially family planning messages. I worked with them on a radio serial drama in PNG and was eager to share notes on how to do this work in Haiti.
When I arrived, the director was with the owner of a research company based in Miami who will be doing the baseline survey for the NGO. Let's call the owner Fred. I mentioned that we are currently airing a radio serial drama with family planning messages and apropos of nothing, Fred began a lecture of what we should do to show whether our radio drama is driving listeners to go to health centers.
Fred, who made it a point to tell me that his company has worked internationally in 11 countries, informed me that we should do exit interviews at clinics to collect data on what encouraged the patient to seek care. The exit interviews with be self-administered, meaning patients would be given a sheet of questions and asked to fill in the answers themselves. I opened my mouth to protest that our target audience is likely to be either illiterate or uncomfortable reading and writing. And why would a health worker would be willing to add to their duties (for free!) by managing these exit interviews for us? How many rural health centers across the country did he imagine doing this in and who would be responsible for it all? But I had no opportunity to vocalize any of these questions because Fred was powering on:
Fred assumes there is at least a computer in every health center (!!!!!!!), so the health workers would then input all the information from the exit interviews into an Excel spreadsheet and e-mail it to us. Fred conceded that not all rural health center may have internet (my money is on none have computers and if they do, the computers are used as a door stop because no one knows how to use it or the monitor went missing years ago) and said that in those cases, the health worker could copy the Excel files to a flash drive (who makes sure those don't disappear in 5 minutes?) and DHL the flash drives to us in Port-au-Prince. DHL? Paid for by whom? Sent to us at what intervals? With what incentives to the health workers????
At this point, my mouth was hanging open. What he proposed so offhandedly was akin to proposing that anyone can film Avatar - just get a Mac and a few billion dollars.
I opted to keep my mouth shut, down the rest of my rum sour, wish them luck, and head off to find people who speak my language.
There are very few hospitals in Haiti, and given how rural the population is, most people's access to health care is at a rural health center that often has no water or electricity, much less medical supplies. In many cases people are afraid to access counselling services for things like family planning for fear that they will be judged by health workers. In other cases, people have no idea that they can go to health centers for these services. We have a radio drama on the air to encourage younger women use a modern form of family planning and to seek advice from a health professional before trying family planning.
Last night I met up with the visiting director of an NGO that produces radio and TV serial dramas with social and environmental messages, especially family planning messages. I worked with them on a radio serial drama in PNG and was eager to share notes on how to do this work in Haiti.
When I arrived, the director was with the owner of a research company based in Miami who will be doing the baseline survey for the NGO. Let's call the owner Fred. I mentioned that we are currently airing a radio serial drama with family planning messages and apropos of nothing, Fred began a lecture of what we should do to show whether our radio drama is driving listeners to go to health centers.
Fred, who made it a point to tell me that his company has worked internationally in 11 countries, informed me that we should do exit interviews at clinics to collect data on what encouraged the patient to seek care. The exit interviews with be self-administered, meaning patients would be given a sheet of questions and asked to fill in the answers themselves. I opened my mouth to protest that our target audience is likely to be either illiterate or uncomfortable reading and writing. And why would a health worker would be willing to add to their duties (for free!) by managing these exit interviews for us? How many rural health centers across the country did he imagine doing this in and who would be responsible for it all? But I had no opportunity to vocalize any of these questions because Fred was powering on:
Fred assumes there is at least a computer in every health center (!!!!!!!), so the health workers would then input all the information from the exit interviews into an Excel spreadsheet and e-mail it to us. Fred conceded that not all rural health center may have internet (my money is on none have computers and if they do, the computers are used as a door stop because no one knows how to use it or the monitor went missing years ago) and said that in those cases, the health worker could copy the Excel files to a flash drive (who makes sure those don't disappear in 5 minutes?) and DHL the flash drives to us in Port-au-Prince. DHL? Paid for by whom? Sent to us at what intervals? With what incentives to the health workers????
At this point, my mouth was hanging open. What he proposed so offhandedly was akin to proposing that anyone can film Avatar - just get a Mac and a few billion dollars.
I opted to keep my mouth shut, down the rest of my rum sour, wish them luck, and head off to find people who speak my language.
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