Hello and love to all my family and friends. Once again we are having an amazing trip. The impact of what we do here each year never seems to amaze me as we keep expanding our scope and practices.

This year we are supporting jiggers clinics, a total of nine while we are here. We are also supporting the community workers to go into people’s homes for follow-up treatment of the infected environment and family.

Before this trip, I knew very little about jiggers and regardless of how much I had read, I could not have prepared myself for this devastating affliction, children, women, and men so afflicted by this mite burrowing under fingers and nails that they eventually can’t walk or feed themselves. The pictures are disturbing but seeing it up close just makes you want to cry. The jiggers can over the long term spread themselves throughout the body and into the brain with devastating damage.

The good news is jiggers is treatable and preventable. Because of your generous donations, we are able to provide ongoing treatment in this area of Kenya. We are told and have seen in follow up that after three months of treatment the hands and feet are almost back to normal. The fingernails and toes may not come back but people can eat, walk and work again.

I have been so moved by this affliction. The need in Kenya is so great.

Thank you and love to one and all,

Trish

The Jiggers program is being supported by Canadian Nurses for Africa and is being run by community workers.  The affected part of the body is washed with soap and them put into a solution of potassium permanganate for three minutes.  Once removed the body part is let dry and then covered with vaseline.  As I have mentioned in an earlier post, the patient is sent home with a bottle of disinfectant to clean the floor of the home to prevent further infection.  Cow dung will seal the floor as it dries to a hard finish.  This is a truely disabilitating disease.  No one should have to live like this.  the photo of the hand is the hand of a small child.  The last photo is the most disturbing, so avoid it if you like.  Dawn