Updates from Sabana Grande Part 2: Laura Budd, Karen Sorenson, Hannah MacDonald, Gaby Maier

Workshops:

Hannah MacDonald

Showing workshop attendees what bacteria look like under the microscope. This was the first time many had had the chance to use a microscope

Another important aspect of our trip was to hold animal health-related workshops for livestock owners within the community. This year we held four workshops: one on poultry health, one on the different classes of pharmaceuticals (such as vaccines, antibiotics, antiparasitics), one on ticks and tick-borne diseases, and one focused on developing presentation skills for veterinary and human healthy workers within the community. Throughout the past year at UC Davis we have been working in teams to prepare these workshops.

The poultry health workshop had a good turnout of about 30 community members. We discussed with our audience what signs and symptoms of illness they see in their chickens. We also specifically discussed how to recognize the signs of Newcastle disease, which is caused by a virus and can quickly sweep through flocks, rapidly killing many chickens. We then discussed how to prevent the spread of poultry diseases, focusing on vaccination, burning or burying infected dead poultry bodies, and spreading information to the community about outbreaks.   

Dr. Gallardo, our faculty mentor with poultry expertise, then demonstrated how to prepare and administer the Newcastle vaccine. We emphasized the future economic benefits of spending a little money now to vaccinate chickens. One of the community’s vet promoters, Hilario, had already vaccinated a few families’ chickens a month before. He was glad to have us back up his efforts to get people to vaccinate their chickens. We hope that between our workshop and his efforts we can get more people to vaccinate their chickens against Newcastle and promote interest in a community-wide vaccination campaign.

Ready for our workshop on ticks!

Our pharmaceutical workshop focused on the basic differences between some major pharmaceutical classes including vaccines, antibiotics, antiparasitics, and vitamins/ minerals. During our trip and during previous trips, our team had encountered great misunderstandings of the different types of drugs. This time we wanted to establish a common language and understanding with the community, so that we could communicate more effectively with each other about pharmaceuticals. Many people in Sabana Grande use “vacuna” (vaccine) to refer to any injectable drug. Certain antibiotics are used to prevent and treat almost every illness. We explained how vaccines are only used for prevention to strengthen the immune system against invading microbes, antibiotics are only used for treatment of bacterial infections, antiparasitics only for the treatment of internal or external parasites, and vitamins and minerals are only used as supplements to strengthen the body's normal functions. 

It was so exciting to see the light bulbs go on in people’s facial expressions as they grasped the idea that many types of medicines could be injected and that “vacuna” only refers to those that prevent specific diseases. We emphasized the danger of antibiotic resistance when antibiotics are used inappropriately to treat all illnesses. We used the microscope brought down last year to show people what some bacteria and parasites look like up close. 

The last portion of the workshop included the presentation of livestock medical record cards. We had a brigadista, a maternal health worker, come up to explain how a human vaccination card is used and why she felt they were important. Before we could even state it ourselves, the brigidistas brought up the idea that such medical record cards should also be used for livestock. We handed out the animal health record cards we had created and explained what information went where on the card. We also discussed how these cards could be valuable tools for information exchange between animal owners, veterinarians, and us. We will find out if these cards were efficacious come the next trip in December. 

Leading some small group discussions during one of our workshops.