Today we spent the day again at Naguru. Unlike yesterday, we were able to visit one of the labs where all the diagnosis takes place. The laboratory is maintained by one lab technician who treats the blood for antibodies to check for syphilis, HIV/Aids and malaria. We were able to view through a microscope what the malaria parasite looks like. We witnessed how the centrifuge splits blood into serum and solid blood cells. The serum is what undergoes the tests as drops of the serum is placed on different strips that will give the positive or negative test results. To test for malaria the process is slightly different. The solid blood cells are put on a glass plate of the microscope and blue die is applied to the blood cells. When you look under a microscope, if there are any red dots remaining, these red dots are the malaria parasite. The average number of malaria parasites (red dots) that a patient with a not yet deadly malaria has in the sample of blood is three to six. When the number of parasites increases past twenty, the patient needs to be put on a drip right away, and may not end up surviving. Otherwise, the patients are given the tablets of medicine and treated in this way.
After our visit of the laboratory we went back to our task of sorting pills, managing to finish almost all the pills that they will be using this session. At this point..I think I can go straight into the pharmaceutical industry as I have found my calling..counting pills.
After an hour or more of sorting pills we proceeded to the outdoors. On a large piece of land lay a tarp..the tarp is actually a tent. This tent needs to be put up, however the tent is too dirty to be built. Our task was to come in and make the tent spotless. At first, from far away, it seemed like a manageable task...once we were closer, this tent was actually gigantic. We were able to experience a true miracle being able to make half of the tent spotless (a completely relative term seeing as all we had was 2 buckets of water, three brooms, one squeegee, and a baggie of detergent). Something that we had not thought of upon laying eyes on this tent..was the fact that water is truly a rarity, making this no easy task.
Upon finishing, I can say that I have mastered the art of making do with what little resources I have.
..also, we have come to appreciate that perfection in these scenarios is not a plausible idea..neither is it plausible to emerge from this process with a millimeter of clean skin left.
- Yara Sifri
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