Medical follow-up for TB

Now that we're back, unpacked, and have settled back into a more-or-less regular schedule, it's time to get down to all of the necessary follow-up tasks.  Our first task was to write a letter to the medical director at Cite Lumiere to set up an account so that we can make referrals for the TB and HIV clinic there.  We understand that we are able to write simple hand-written referrals from the field, give the person money to travel by public transport to Cite Lumiere, and they can show up and get free testing for TB and HIV.  If they test positive they will receive the meds they need.  (Greyson and I will be finding out more 'exactly' about this when we stay at Cite Lumiere in January.) The first person we are referring is the cute little 11 year old girl in the red dress that was on the front of our fund-raising flyer earlier this summer.  She's an orphan we saw in February.  When Greyson and Matt saw her at Platon in October, she no longer had any hair and she doesn't look any healthier despite vitamins.  Culturally, there may be lots of things going on, but at least we can refer her for testing so that we have a little bit better idea of what we may be able to do for her.  She has a beautiful name:  Wislene Noel.  (She is in the photo slideshow on the right.  The little girl, with no hair, in the blue dress.) The other two are women are also from Platon.  Montilia is 38 years old and pregnant.  Jacqueline is 19 years old and presented with weight loss, fever, and cough.  Please pray for all of them. (I'm still not able to upload photos directly to the blog.  I really need to find time to upload the Wordpress software.)