Invite Leads to Web Help: Lori Waters, Founder of Waters Biomedical Communications, on Her Trip to eLearning Africa 2007

When Lori Water came to visit eLearning Africa in May 2007, the conference was only one assignment on a long list of activities. To make the most of her stay, the agile Canadian entrepreneur spent several days in an HIV aid agency in Kenya and she also managed to initiate cooperation efforts on fighting female genital cutting and water supply.

Lori’s first stop, after a layover in London, was in Kisumu to deliver medical supplies and meet with HIV educators and patients at the Family AIDS Care and Education Services (FACES) at the Lumumba Health Centre. The two boxes of medicines and medical supplies she brought, provided by Health Partners of Canada, contained about $5,500 worth of medicines, enough to treat as many as 1,000 children and adults.

In Kisumu, she also spent one eye-opening day working at FACES. Her efforts included taking height, weight, temperature, respiration and heart rates and writing prescriptions for Food by Prescription - a USAID program- to low body mass index, pregnant and neonate patients. “Some of these women were at least six feet tall and weighed maybe fifty kilos”, says Lori. She then attended some peer counseling sessions —where patients enrolled in the programme are taught how important it is to stay on the drugs provided through FACES and receive details about the need for nutrition. Counselors also work to combat the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS.

Some of these sessions were rather brutal, Lori remembers, especially for those who dropped the programme. “They would say things like ‘obviously you want to die, so we’re going to give these medications to someone who wants it’,” Waters explained. She realised quickly, however, that the scare tactics were necessary and successful. “They send them back to the village to think about it and the people usually come back”.

Lori then went to the Kajiado girls’ rescue centre - home to about a hundred girls aged six to fifteen. The centre recently received a donation of a water borehole, located several kilometres away. The plan is eventually to get a pipe that runs from the borehole to the cistern; currently the girls must walk to the borehole and carry back the water in buckets on their heads.

Lori confirmed to the administrator for the home, Mrs Jecinta Loki, that she would develop materials on the implications of female circumcision as practiced by the Masai. Back in Nairobi, Lori again hoped to contribute to educational efforts about female cutting. There she met Agnes Pareyio, the 2005 UN Person of the Year, who used to walk from village to village teaching communities about female circumcision. Ms Pareyio has established a rescue centre for girls, similar to the one at Kajiado, and Waters will develop similar teaching aids for both Loki and Pareyio.

At eLearing Africa, Lori spent her first day in a workshop at Gatundo District Hospital, north of Nairobi, reviewing a nursing eLearning project to upgrade all nursing staff in the country. “If they tried to upgrade all the nurses in Kenya using traditional training approaches, it would take sixty years,” Waters said. Using the modern method, they hope to have all nurses bumped up a certification level within five years. Her session came on day three of the Conference.

The day started with what she calls “a glitch.” Thieves had taken her camera, cash, computer and ID from her hotel room, but Waters remained undaunted. She had judiciously uploaded the presentation to her web site before leaving for Kenya, so she was able to retrieve the information, including what she’d done during her layover in London. “My session was very well received,” Waters said. At the time her hotel room was being broken into, Lori was meeting with a group called the Tuendelee Mbele Workers Welfare Group. Theirs was another group she felt she could help and she set up www.tuendeleeworkerswelfare.org upon her return to Canada.

Her final day was spent with members of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a busy group who allotted her twenty minutes for a presentation. “They are working on a number of public education programmes, not just around HIV and AIDS, but they are also trying to educate in regard to vaccine varieties — largely for informed consent for people participating in trials”, Lori explained. She was nervous as the group sat down to watch her DVD, the DVD that brought her to Africa in the first place. After the first watching, the group sat silent for a moment. Then a woman spoke up, “Can we see it again?” “I think they watched it two more times, and we talked, and I stayed there for two hours”, Waters said. She plans to help create visual education tools for the group. “All in all, it was an extremely productive trip, and I was able to accomplish the majority of what I had set out to do.”

Here is Lori’s resume on eLearning Africa 2007
“The eLearning Africa conference had a remarkable breadth and depth of talks, from medicine to practical technology tips. I’ve never attended a conference where the participants where anywhere near as engaged and interested. The attendees were extremely focused on ensuring their agendas were moved forward by the conference, which made for lively and efficient productive time spent. My organisation, Waters Biomedical, came away from the conference with many appropriate contacts. Since then, we have engaged in project work with several of them, and we continue to keep in contact with others. Currently, we are helping with teaching materials for HIV and AIDS for groups in Nairobi, Kisumu, and Kajiado, and are in progress on female genital mutilation materials. I am certain that the opportunities generated at the conference will continue to be fruitful, as we continue to have follow-up e-mails, and proposals for additional health training materials are moving forward”.

To learn more about Lori Waters and her work visit www.watersbiomedical.com.

This write-up is partially based on an article that appeared on the Peninsula News Review online magazine in June 2007.

October 30, 2007

Newsportal: eLearning and Health Education