WiRED International Salutes Alice Olwino
BY ALLISON KOZICHAROW AND BERNICE BORN
A
Alice Olwino
lice Olwino is a nurse who works at the KUAP Pandipieri Center in Kisumu, one of the poorest and most underserved areas of Kenya. She has used WiRED International Health Learning Center modules to train local people on mother and child issues and other topics. In August Ms. Olwino was awarded Best Nurse of Kisumu County.
Her story follows:
My Success Story
My name is Alice Olwino. I am a nurse at KUAP Pandipieri and currently stationed at the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Department. This is my first post-training employment. During my service, I have been able to meet many clients, and I have interacted with them in depth. I saw a need for adjusting my reporting time on duty to 30 minutes earlier, so as to meet the needs of a number of my clients who are working pregnant women and have to report to work by 8 a.m.; I also needed to know more about the progress and development of their babies.
My work in the MCH project enables me to be at the forefront of implementing activities to reach the aim of the project, which is to contribute to the health and well-being of women and their families by providing integrated services that reduce the risk of maternal and child mortality. My work includes antenatal care to identify existing risks in women and to prevent new cases of pediatric HIV.
The most impressive part of my work is seeing the response of HIV-positive women who are taking medication to prevent mother to child transmission and then getting the negative results for the final antibodies test at 18 months. That indicates that their babies are HIV negative, and I know that I have contributed to the elimination of HIV from mother to child transmission. I have also witnessed great success in helping malnourished children whom I have referred to the nutrition clinic. I have watched their progress of recovery and that of antenatal clients who have had successful deliveries at the county hospital and at private maternity clinics.
The key factor for success at the MCH has been the health education sessions with the clients, which enabled me to reach my goals. I have realized the need for frequent follow-up visits to mothers enrolled in MCH, so I can continue giving them health education in their homes, and I can remind them of their scheduled visits with the clinician. I hope that these health education sessions will be a means of developing better working relationships with women and their children.
Thanks to WIRED International, I have accessed their module information on the KUAP Center computers. What I have learned from WiRED has enabled me to give critical information to pregnant mothers about HIV and AIDS and how to prevent mother to child transmission. Also, there are many malnourished children in the slums of Kisumu who have benefitted from the knowledge I received from WiRED.
^ Back to the Top |
