All work and no play means it's time for VACATION

We’ve spent the last week mostly in our office, trying to pull together our IRB submissions. Basically, IRB means getting ethical and institutional approval on our project design. In the past few years, NHRC has waived IRB approval for Georgetown students because we’re here for such a short time and our projects are really basic, anyway. In fact, Georgetown advised us NOT to try to get approval because it will take too long. However, you can’t get published in a journal if you don’t have IRB approval, so all four of us decided to go through the extra work this year. In my head, my groundbreaking research is going to get published in The Lancet and the WHO is going to be begging me to come on as a consultant after graduation, so IRB is obviously really important to me. Reality, on the other hand, is obviously not very important.

My project is called “Barriers to the Use of Oral Rehydration Therapy for the Treatment of Diarrhea in Children Under 5 in the Kassena-Nankana East and Kassena-Nankana West Districts of Northern Ghana,” and before you ask, yes, I did make it that long to sound really official and intense. Paul thinks it’s gross and is welcome to stop reading at this point. In Ghana, like in pretty much every developing country, diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death among children (others being malaria, pneumonia, and neonatal causes). First of all, there’s a lot more cases because of lack of things like indoor plumbing and running water. But more importantly, diarrhea occurs in children that are already malnourished, and usually chronically ill from malaria, meaning that the dehydration caused by diarrhea can have complications as severe as coma or death. Since the 1970’s, Oral Rehydration Therapy has been used to cheaply and effectively treat dehydration due to diarrhea. It’s basically a sugar-salt solution, kind of like Gatorade. During the 1980’s, use was really high in mothers of young children. However, today use hovers around 30% despite nearly 85% of mothers identifying ORT as the correct treatment for diarrhea. SO. That’s what I’m looking at in my research-- why mothers don’t use ORT even when they know they should. I actually really like the topic. This is a big problem here, so I feel like my research is actually contributing new and useful information, rather than investigating something that’s already been done.

Pending approval, we actually start our projects next week when we get back from vacation in Cape Coast. Until that point, I have nothing but the sun, the beach, and the quest for a cheeseburger to keep me busy. There’s also rumors of a mall and movie theater in Accra. But I’m going to be a bit MIA, so wanted to give you a heads up that I haven’t died, I hope. Before I go, here is a picture of Natifah (Mary’s daughter) and her friends performing for us at lunch last weekend. It basically could have been 2001 in San Antonio with my brothers, cousins, and I performing, and made me giggle quite a bit. They even dressed poor Robert (front right) up like a girl, and he threw a fit just like Dylan used to. Older sisters are mean, Dyl, that’s consistent pretty much everywhere.