Friday 10th November

We drove to Kenema to see the small clinic there, and to view the site of the proposed new unit (which we now know will receive Irish Aid funding). The hospital staff here said that river blindness was actually a bigger problem than cataracts in this district. They also had a major problem with Lassa fever. Their Ophthalmic nurses and Cataract Surgeon had been trained in The Gambia – apparently this had been a good course.

We met their river blindness focal person who had begun his community awareness work and started training the CDDs (volunteers trained in each village to distribute the drugs, as opposed to the old system using health workers).
He was waiting to hear when he would get his Mectizan® – apparently this is the last area to be treated.

We drove then back to Bo for a fairly early night.