Category Archives: Burundi MDA 2011

Stories and photos from the 2011 MDA in Burundi.

Personal Perspectives Part 4: Inside look at Burundi’s national NTD program

Burundi MDA 2011, de-worming, MDA, , ,

Below is the last installment of our four part series featuring award-winning producer Jessica Stuart’s stories from the field:

Friday, June 24th- Citoboke

Guise and Wangechi work at the distribution center

We spent the morning in Bujumbura visiting the country’s drug distribution site. Although it’s a warehouse full of boxes, it’s an exciting place. We see drugs from the World Bank, from UNICEF, from pharma, lined up along walls waiting to be picked up and taken to communities that need them the most.  We find rows and rows of Albendezole. This drug is less than a dollar and we’ve already seen what it’s done across Burundi. The room is filled with kindness packed in brown boxes. It’s the kind of place we would want to know is there for our children.

Drug distribution center in Bujumbura

Although time is getting tight, on our last day of filming, we decide to go to a site that has evidence of another NTD, schistosomiasis (also known as Bilharzia or Snail Fever). If there is one thing I’ve learned in my travels to Africa, “Not far” means FAR. If you ask anyone how long it takes to get somewhere, the answer is always “not far”. “Not far” could possibly mean 5 minutes, but it usually means an hour or more.

We ask the ministry representative where it is. The answer, of course, is “not far”. We head North of Bujumbura for over an hour and a half to an area called Citoboke.  This is the part of Burundi that separates itself from Eastern Congo by a small river.  The feeling is different here. Drier, hotter, and more intense. The road is…. bumpy to say the least’ full of potholes.  Not far becomes 30 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half plus a stop at the ministry for protocol.

Boys collecting water in Citoboke, along the Congo Border

Just when I think I can’t hear anything worse about NTDs, Guise tells us about Schisto.  Although it has a low mortality rate, its chronic effects are devastating. It damages internal organs, impairs growth in children, and can cause damage in cognitive development.  I read that Schisto is second in economic impairment to a country only to Malaria.

snail samples from Citoboke

Schisto comes from fresh water snails. Guise and a guide from the Ministry walk along the Eastern Congo border to a riverbed.  Here, the doctor and Guise begin searching for snails. After a few minutes, they begin to find many and collect them for testing. At the same time, several families are at the same location bathing themselves and their children. It appears to be a bathing place for members of the community.

Crew films children bathing in Citoboke

Again, I don’t know what to say or think. The water is a blessing and necessary to life, yet it’s the water that is keeping the population sick.  It’s hard to watch kids playing and bathing, knowing they are putting their life at risk.  We film and gather crowds, curious what we are doing on the side of a road.  It’s hard to explain we are hoping to save lives when they don’t even know their lives are at risk to begin with.

The end.

We returned to our hotel, which felt like the Ritz Carlton after a week of bucket showers.

We sat outside of our hotel, watching hippos graze from Lake Taganika and the lights of Tanzania shimmering on the other side of the water. In the distance Burundian drummers were performing a celebration and the sound wafted our direction. Keith, Kenny, and I toast and think about the next time we will be lucky enough to travel dirt roads, take cold showers, film for 15 hours a day, get covered in dust,  and travel to far reaches to tell stories about people who need us the most. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

I think our translator Gerard summed up our trip the best as he got out of the car to say goodbye. He looked at me and said in his very deliberate English “When I started this journey I was just a translator of English. But after this trip, if one more child gets an albendizole pill, or one more person doesn’t have to suffer because of the work this group is doing, I will always know that I, myself, had a very small part in making my country a better place, and that brings me more joy than I have ever known”. Well said Gerard. Well said.

Jessica Stuart is an award winning producer and consultant. Her video work and live productions have been seen around the globe- on television, the web, and in theaters. She has worked for NBC Network News, The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC Network News, and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  In September 2008, Jessica created Long Story Short Media, an independent creative consulting and producing firm, specializing in short form, multi-use content. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband, David, her son Alexander, and their rescue dog, Riley Martin.

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Personal Perspectives Part 3: Inside look at Burundi’s National NTD Program

Africa, Burundi MDA 2011, de-worming, Maternal Health, MDA, , , ,

Part three of our four part series featuring award-winning producer Jessica Stuart’s stories from the field:

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 – Karuzi

Excited children at Canzikiro

We travel 4 hours of bumpy, dusty roads- passing through tea plantations, getting into traffic jams with cattle, to reach the Karuzi Province.  This is a place that doesn’t often have outside visitors, so the cars themselves were a spectacle of mass proportion; not to mention the blonde sunburned woman and the tall South African man with sound gear strapped to him.

We visited a school called Canzikiro and were greeted by thousands of smiling faces. And yet, I am great crowd control because children think I am a ghost or an angel, they either run away or run to me!

We spoke with a teacher and she enthusiastically told us that she sees more children coming to school because they are healthy and because their families are healthy. She has seen a difference of children paying attention in class and able to focus.  The teacher, herself was pregnant. She miscarried the first time, possibly due to anemia from worms herself, but is looking forward to the birth of her first baby next month. There is possibility.

Children at Canzikiro school in Karuzi Province wait in line for school MDA

Children at Canzikiro school in Karuzi Province wait in line for school MDA

Man in Bugenyazi diagnosed with Trachoma

In the afternoon we traveled down more bumpy roads to Bugenyuzi,, a community with approximately 11 percent of the population suffering from Trachoma.  This is a new program and the inhabitants of this community press us for more. They want to know when we are coming back, when the next round of medicine is coming, and how we can help stop the suffering. The area we are in is difficult to get to. The word “remote” doesn’t do justice to its location. These are the bottom billion. These are the poor that are rarely reached, stuck in a cycle of poverty, yet with a desire to do for themselves. They just need a lift, a boost; and we can do that for less than 50 cents. The drugs are there. The knowledge is there. We can eliminate NTDs even from the places and in the corners no one is looking.

That evening, we sit down to a goat brochette, a gin and tonic and a cold shower from a bucket and a cup. There are no mosquito nets, so I sleep with my hooded sweatshirt on, a half bottle of DEET burning my skin, and hope for the best.Malaria is the least of my worries at this point.

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Personal Perspectives Part 2: Inside look at Burundi’s national NTD program

Burundi MDA 2011, de-worming, MDA, Trachoma, Water and Sanitation, , , ,

Part two of our four part series featuring award-winning producer Jessica Stuart’s stories from the field:

Monday, June 20- Mwaro Province

Keith Walker films community members in Mwaro Province

On our first full day of travel in Burundi, we drive 2 hours into the mountains to the Mwaro Province.  Today is a very exciting day for the Global Network and partners; the culmination of over 4 years of work.  The Health Minister,Madame Minister Sabine is in Mwaro Province to Launch National Mother and Child Week. This initiative is an integrated approach at a National Level for an MDA- a mass drug administration. Partners include the Burundian Government, The Global Network, Geneva Global, CBM, WHO, and Schistomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). Here, every pregnant woman and child between 1-5 years old can receive free Albendezole to treat whipworm and roundworm, along with Tetanus vaccinations and Vitamin A distribution provided by UNICEF and partners.

Health Minister Sabine distributes Albendizole to a mother and baby at the Futa Clinic in Mwaro Province

This program is one of the few they are running at a National level after the Genocide and the Civil War.

Because it has devastated the country, infrastructure is practically non-existent. There is evidence of rebuilding, but it will take quite some time. Being among the top poorest countries in the world, Burundi can’t do it alone.

The Minister delivered medicines herself. In a speech, she told the community gathered that no one should suffer from any form of NTDs when the medicine and vaccines are free to the people.   She said there are 9 provinces where worms are ravaging the population. Mwaro is one of them.

If anything is happening in a rural village, the ENTIRE village shows up. It is an inevitable factor.

Health Minister Sabine distributes a tetanus shot at Futa Clinic

Hundreds, maybe even thousands come. Events of any kind are taken very seriously.  And today, Madame Minister’s visit to the “Stadium” (a large field used to play soccer), the village came to listen. Dances were performed and speeches were given. Our interpreter, Gerard, explained to me that each song and dance represented an illness or health initiative. They sang about using malaria nets, how to wash your hands for hygiene, how women should breast feed for the first 6 months. Now, I highly doubt NeYo or Akon or JayZ would create a song about public health, but the moment reminded me of those cartoons we used to watch as children that taught us about Bills on Capitol Hill or how not to over salt your meat. Or at the end of GI Joe when the lesson would come and GI Joe would say “now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Same concept, different execution.  We aren’t so different.

Minister Sabine at a protocol meeting over an Amstel

We ended our day with Madame Minister and formal government protocol. Protocol was to sit and enjoy a beer and talk about the news, families, etc. One thing I must say about Burundi- the beers are NOT 12 ounces. They are liters.  So, about 50 of us sat around, each sipping our liter of beer.  I don’t even like beer that much, but protocol is protocol!

Our hotel in Mwaro had hot water and electricity. No Internet.  Our dinner took 2 hours to cook and we could only eat what they had left from the day–rice, 2 chicken legs, a chicken wing and some fish for 7 of us. This is the first night, however, we learned about brochette. Brochette in Burundi is a meat kabob. There are brochette shacks all over Burundi.  Brochette and beer is happy hour. Brochette and beer is happy hour with no choice of anything else but brochette and beer, or goat or cow brochette.

At the hotel, Kenny’s room had disco lights in the bathroom. I’m not sure why only his room had flashing green, blue, and red lights –we figured he had the honeymoon suite.

Tuesday, June 21st- Rutuna Province

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Personal Perspectives: Inside look at Burundi’s national NTD prgoram

Africa, Burundi MDA 2011, NTDs, , National NTD Programs, , SCI

Jessica Stuart is a producer who has worked with Global Network in the past. Recently, she traveled to Burundi where she captured on film and camera a four-year national NTD program that is supported by a generous grant from the Legatum Foundation. The program has been supported and implemented through a partnership that includes  the Global Network, the Burundi Ministry of Health, Geneva Global, CBM, and SCI. We will be featuring excerpts from Jessica’s experiences in Burundi; below is the first entry from her notes:

Sunday June 19, 2011- Arrival in Bujumbura

Keith Walker and I met up in DC and traveled together from Dulles Airport to Addis Ababa to Nairobi to Bujumbura….

Map is an edited Google Map

About 16 hours.  We reached the airport in Bujumbura which looked something like a building out of the cartoon Superfriends. Several large bubbles, or igloos, or something. I’ve not seen anything quite like it before.

When we arrived at the hotel, we met up with our soundman Kenny Geraghty, who had flown in from Capetown, South Africa earlier in the day.

Our family was together again.

(From l tor: Film Crew: Keith Walker, Jessica Stuart, Kenny Geraghty)

Kenny, the gentle giant- hysterical- warm-and has more experience in his pinky than most have in a lifetime.  Keith is the most ridiculously talented and relentless shooter that makes all the women blush. And then there is me.  Even though we only meet up in bizarre places in the world, every time we are together it’s like coming home.

We are traveling together this time to document the work of the Global Network and its partners, working to eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases around the world.

NTDs ravage countries like Burundi. They affect the poorest of the poor- the bottom billion, often invisible to the outside world. The amazing thing- these diseases are preventable and treatable- for less than $1.25 a day.

I still can’t get over how utterly cruel NTDs are. One has to look way below the surface, to the bottom poorest billion in the world to find them. These diseases keep children out of school, are debilitating and disfiguring, and cost billions of dollars a year in  lost worker productivity.  These diseases cause stigma in the community. They are the cruelest of the cruel.

Lush agriculture in Northern Burundi.

Burundi has its own political and infrastructure issues, along with such sickness. Civil War and Genocide plagued the country for years. It was only in 2008 that a peace agreement was made between internal warring factors.  The country is filled with kind and curious people–people who want work and prosperity NOW. They want to put the “crisis” (as they call it) behind them. Burundi is beautiful. Everywhere we look there are tea plantations, coffee farms, rice fields, banana trees, and pineapples. This is a country that could prosper on its own. But something like Neglected Tropical Diseases keeps the people down.

I’ve learned the entire country of Burundi is at risk of infection by at least one STH (Soil Transmitted Helminthes- or worms).  Half the country is at risk for schistosomiasis, and trachoma is a serious public health problem.

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