Phase One (mostly) Complete

Just about two months ago it was confirmed that Peace Corps Togo would be the independent evaluator for the Global Fund funded mosquito net distribution that occurred last October in all regions of Togo (excluding one piece of the Maritime region).  Togo received roughly 70million dollars from the Global Fund to complete last year's bed net distribution and 20million dollars more has been promised if the first phase of the distribution goes well.  To determine if the distribution went well, and to give the organizations and the government who distributed the nets an idea of how close they came to reaching their goals, an independent evaluator is needed (A.K.A. us).

With funding from the WHO, UNICEF, and Plan Togo, two other volunteers and I were chosen to lead the study.   Our task was to perform a nation-wide survey of households to determine bed net usage, how many more nets are needed to achieve the goal of universal coverage, and of course the effectiveness of the bed net distribution itself.  To do this we have organized six trainings for Peace Corps volunteers and their Togolese counterparts to educate about the importance of the collection of good data and the protocol for performing the survey.  With five regional trainings (one for each region) and training for the trainers we will have trained over 220 people in everything from why this survey needs to be done, to what is bias, to how to ask a question.  The majority of these trainings occurred this Monday, except Savanes which is a week later, and the Training of Trainers which was a week earlier, all of which seem to have gone pretty well. 

I am glad Monday is over. Leading up to these trainings we have been working tirelessly booking hotels, writing manuals, negotiating budgets, creating computer programs, mapping villages to be surveyed, and so much more.  There were days that I would come into the office around 6:30am and not leave ‘til midnight, only to show up again the next morning at six.  I spent three straight days staring at a map on the med-unit wall, because it was the only map available that had on it (nearly) all the villages I needed.  It has been a tiring couple of months and it is nice to have a good portion of our work over with.

After these regional trainings, volunteers and their counterparts will go out to their assigned villages and perform a survey of household in those communities.  Once the surveys are completed volunteers will send us their data and we will compile our report analyzing the results.  Until we begin to get data back from the volunteers we have a little break where we will get to think about our report in a more relaxed setting, and I will finally get to return to my own bed and will no longer be sharing a cot the size of a twin bed with another volunteer or eating street food every night of the week.

For now we must wait to see if our survey goes well. I’m hoping for some good data and lots of bed net use!