Vaccination campaign begins tomorrow!
Hello everyone! I hope you've been following our progress on themeasles.org. We've had some technically difficulties working with the Kickstarter website from Ghana, but we wanted to try to post something here before we get even busier in the next few days.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We also wanted to use this opportunity to ask everyone who hasn't done so: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send us your address and other information requested back in September (search your inboxes for September 7th or 8th). If your rewards include a gift or postcard from Africa, we need your info ASAP. We'd hate for you to miss out just because you missed our information request.
Below is our October Update from our site; be sure to go there for a lot more pictures and blogging! -Miranda and Adam
October 27th, 2010:
Time has been flying by, which probably means we’re making progress and enjoying ourselves tremendously. Ghana is a beautiful place full of some of the most considerate people we’ve ever met.
In the last month we’ve been shooting quite a bit around the Central Region of Ghana, mostly in Cape Coast (at a couple of different schools and in other venues). For more details on this, see Adam’s blog.
Also, speaking of Adam, he is now officially a UN Ambassador. Although word came down in early September, it wasn’t until late October (for World UN Day) that Adam was able to come to New York along with the five other newly minted Citizen Ambassadors. His blog has the full write-up of his accounting, but we just want to extend another heartfelt thanks to the UN and everyone at UN’s DPI that worked so hard to make this such an amazing trip for us.
Today was the kick-off of the public awareness portion of the measles campaign here in Ghana, and the next several days will see many thousands of flyers (“handbills”) posted, along with radio and tv commercials, thousands of volunteers from the Ghana Red Cross and Latter Day Saints going house-to-house, along with the official house-to-house coverage by Ghana Health Services disease control teams.
The press conference in Accra today was attended by many health leaders, including the vice president of Ghana, who had some very inspiring words to share about development and equality.
The actual vaccination campaign will run from Nov 3-6, during which Ghana will seek to vaccinate 4.3 million children from ages 9 months – 59 months. We are very, very excited to be a part of this and to capture the tireless efforts of so many people and organizations here in Ghana. As a prelude to the campaign the first handful of children were ceremoniously vaccinated (and given vitamin A drops) by two nurses today at the press conference (photo below).
Lastly, we are in the process of donating the funds raised by the JSIS students to Ghana Red Cross Society in support of the campaign. Stay tuned to Adam’s blog for an update on that after the donation ceremony.
