Plastic Hair and Plasmodium falciparium

As the heading suggests, Chelsea got her hair braided in true Ugandan fashion. We have both noticed that hairstyles here (in women) change both often and profoundly. Some mornings I don't recognize people at first glance! The style should last about 2 months, with proper care and attention. Another interesting hair fact; school girls here are not aloud long hair, so they have shaved heads, often shorter than even the boys.

We were recieved by the Associate Dean of the Makerere Medical School (Makerere is the oldest university in East Africa, and counts many major African leaders as alumni), who asked us to help out with a pilot project he wanted to begin at a small rural hospital. He wanted us to help develop the clinical laboratory. On arrival at St. Stephen's hospital, in the Kampala suburb Mpererewe, we discovered that they had been given an incubator from the Rotary club, and wanted to make use of it. As our training was mostly theoretical (as opposed to clinical, practical), this would prove a challenge, but one we were up to. Not much happened that day, as the power was off, and had been for two days previous. We returned a few days later to the hospital and met with the head of the laboratory to brainstorm. The major constraints were space for the peripheral support equipment required to culture organisms for clinical diagnosis (autoclave, media reagents, petri dishes, CO2 source (in some cases)), and the funding to get them. This week, we have been going through some laboratory methods manuals and developing protocols that would suit the current set up with minimal additional investment.

The other picture is from that second day at St. Stephen's, where apart from brainstorming, we got to carry out tests for pregnancy (1, positive!), malaria (several positive), Salmonella (negative), and tuberculosis (several positive). The pathogen responsible for malaria, P. falciparium, was what I was looking for in this young girl's finger blood. The test is simple: prick the finger (to her chagrin), squeeze blood onto a slide, dry, stain, and examine slide under a microscope to find the offending creatures.