APOC in Ghana: May 29th

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

by Allaire Morgan (Electrical Engineering, ’22)

Today, the team took various field trips related to water supply and public health. After being picked up on the bus, we drove for about an hour through the busy (and bumpy) streets of Kumasi to the Barakese Headworks of Ghana Water Company Limited. We spent the majority of the morning and early afternoon on a tour of the plant, following in chronological order the retrieval and treatment of water from the reservoir.

Upon walking up to the dam, the roar of the water was powerful. We went into a garage-like building which housed the four large pumps from the dam, pumping water uphill for further processing. After climbing approximately five stories on a shaky ladder, we reached the top of the dam to observe the reservoir from which the Ghana Water Company extracts its water. From there, our team ventured up the hill to observe the water treatment plant.

With the sun beating down, we slowly made our way through the facility, observing each stage of the treatment process in which millions of gallons of water were being treated at a time. The first stage, aeration, takes about six hours to complete. From there, water is pumped into giant drums for sedimentation, where water is stirred and polymers are added to force harmful chemicals to settle at the bottom. Clean water then slowly rises up in the million-gallon drum, with the clean water spilling over the edges to be collected and further processed in large sand filters. The sludge at the bottom of the drum is currently pumped back into the river, which may propose a serious public health problem in the future. The team then followed our guide into the labs, where we observed the various tests which are performed daily on the water after treatment to ensure proper sanitation. Lab technicians perform chemical experiments and culture the water to ensure that water-borne diseases cannot be carried by the filtered water.

After learning so much at the treatment plant, the team jumped on the bus to escape the heat and then traveled, after lunch, to the Komfo Akoye Teaching Hospital to observe the patient intake process in the hypertension clinic. We watched carefully in small groups from the corner of each doctor’s office to see how patients are treated and diagnosed. The doctors see around twenty to thirty patients per day, but on worse days they can see up to forty, with around two being new referrals from peripheral clinics. After speaking with the patient, the doctor makes a prescription recommendation on the patient’s paper file and gives it to the nurse for further processing. Each patient has a paper book which contains all of their medical data and history since coming to the hospital, and they retrieve it from a records room every time they visit. When asked about digitizing the process, the nurses were surprisingly resistant, arguing that they already were used to the paper filing system and they do not have the proper training to efficiently use a computer to file records.

After a long day of observations, the team traveled back to the guest house to eat dinner. Over our meal of pizza , spring rolls, and ambiguous but delicious juice, we discussed the events of the day and refocused our project, ironing out a specific plan for how we want to design our program and creating a vision for its implementation. We went to bed exhausted from a long day’s work but motivated for the project developments to come.

APOC in Ghana: May 26th

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

by Aime Bienfait Igiraneza (Computer Science, ’20)

Operation: Relaxation…and laundry

Itinerary:

  • Breakfast: Eggs, bread and tea. 8:30am
  • Laundry
  • Lunch at the Magnificent Foods
  • Running (or more of walking in my case) and swimming at the KNUST university

After what was a fun, informative, but busy week filled with hospital and clinic visits and walks through communities (and not forgetting the activity-filled day we had before, of course), this Sunday was supposed to be the time to relax…and do laundry.

Team meeting to talk about project.

Our breakfast started a little later than usual. Though breakfast was ready at 8:30 am, most of us had a lazy morning in and came out to eat at 9:00 am. When all the team members were assembled before the usual omelet and tea breakfast, we decided to do an impromptu recap of the week and brainstormed on how we could adapt our initial project to fit the clinics and hospitals we had visited during the week. This session, as spontaneous as it was, became a good way for us to build on our observations from the week not just for the applications of our project, but for identifying certain problems that can become future projects for future APOC teams.

El and Laura doing laundry in the bathtub

Keeping the theme of lazy Sunday in mind, we did not start laundry until late morning, around 10:30 am. This didn’t prove to be a very wise idea, especially since we were supposed to do laundry the old-fashioned way with water, a bar of soap, and our good old hands. Furthermore, there proved to be a shortage of buckets for all of us to do laundry at the same time, which didn’t seem to leave enough time before the bus was supposed to pick us up at 1:00 pm for lunch. Nonetheless, we bonded as we shared our buckets (who knew that manual laundry-washing was such a social activity) and we made it in time for lunch; also nothing a little adrenaline and team work couldn’t fix.

Kyler and Bienfait doing laundry.

After laundry, we had lunch at the same restaurant we visited last Sunday: Magnificent Foods. The food was just as fantastic as we know it is in Ghana (the serving sizes are still too large for any of us to finish), but the most eventful thing was that the tailor came to take our measurements for the traditional clothes we are to wear to the King’s palace next Sunday. Everyone had their designs on their phones, their cloths bought from the market, and a bit of excitement on their faces as we saw our plans on the clothes being born. We anticipate receiving the clothes sometime this week. (Emotion check: beaming with excitement!!)

Once our long lunch meal was over, we decided to do a very un-lazy thing and went running on the KNUST campus before the sun set. This created another team bonding moment and we went swimming afterwards. This was the most memorable part for me because, though I can’t swim, I had my teammates with me and they taught me some basic swimming skills.

The rest of the night was very lazy. We played cards until late and each prepared for the week to come. (Emotion check: tired but excited to start the week.)

APOC in Ghana 2019: May 23rd

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

by Aime Bienfait Igiraneza (Computer Science, ’20)

The morning was fantastic! Several group members were having a slightly enhanced digestion, which turned out not so great. It did not help that we also saw at least three guys peeing on the street, a serious public health issue that should be looked into. Nonetheless, we were excited for the day and we were not disappointed. We were about to visit one of the regional hospitals. If I were to summarize the day, there were two main takeaways: First, the hospital has an amazing system that works. Second, the potential of the system in place is not fully explored.

We started by meeting the medical director of the hospital along with another doctor specializing in tuberculosis. The main methods used to diagnose TB are microscopy and GeneXpert when the patient can produce sputum. Otherwise, the use of X-rays test is the remaining option. Although patients with TB can be diagnosed within two hours, it is still challenging to catch all cases due to stigma and the fact that testing is only ever done in the morning. Even the detected cases are more likely to be very advanced as people tend to first try other medicines when they encounter symptoms such as coughing, thinking that it will simply go away. However, an interesting program to collect sputum from pharmacies has been initiated which allows professionals to catch those who simply buy cough medicines from drug stores. After being diagnosed, patients are prescribed TB pills and these patients are re-checked after six months, which unfortunately is not always followed up on. When possible, patients are also followed up on at home by special health workers who ensure that pills are taken as prescribed. Even better, injectables are administered once in four months, thus reducing the burden of taking pills every day.

A few technical challenges were mentioned. The first one is that medical records for every patient are still saved in books, which pile up over time making it difficult to manage. A software called Health Administration Management System (HAMS) is used to save patients’ identifications and registration book numbers. When this book is updated, so is the HAMS account corresponding to the particular patient. All this is done in real time. Then, at the end of the day, staff from the Health and Information office use a software called District Health Management System (DHMS) to collect the information about the types of patients seen that day. This information is drawn from HAMS as well as record books. Thus, the challenge is how to automate the uploading of data from HAMS to DHMS in real time without waiting until the end of the day to manually do it. This has not been possible in part because HAMS does not contain all the necessary details.

Overall, it’s impressive how well everything works, given the current structure and workflow. At least, we learned about a few challenges, which by the way, were not always revealed to us. As usual, a ridiculously delicious lunch was provided. We also passed by the mall and bought a few fabrics. When we came back from the hospital, we picked up some KFC chickens for dinner and kept enjoying the incredible Ghanaian hospitality until we called it a day.

APOC in Ghana: May 22nd

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

We started the day very early at 7:00 am with a drive to the Suntreso General Hospital where we were to visit Dr. Agyarko-Poku, a venerologist who would help us understand more about mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS to aid in our study of noncommunicable diseases.

We arrived at the hospital, where the in-charge for the STI-OPD unit welcomed us and gave us a general overview of how events are run at the hospital’s HIV clinic which occurs on Wednesdays for adults and on Fridays for children. She gave us also an overview of how viral testing, data collection, and drug dispensary and treatment occur for the confirmed patients in the hospital. We got to see the relevant data points that were collected on each patient visit to help us better understand how well to modify our machine learning system.

We then went to the Disease Control Unit where the professionals there have the job of collating all hospital cases at the end of the week to identify diseases that are on the rise and have the potential to become public health concerns. We also got to understand more about how tuberculosis is diagnosed in the clinics and how treatment occurs for the disease. We found out also that drug-resistant tuberculosis has not been much of a problem for that particular hospital, contrary to what we thought. After this, we split into teams and went to visit the ART center, the counseling center, the dispensary, the data management room, as well as the consulting room where we got to interact more with the health professionals (i.e. nurses and pharmacists) in order to understand the processes that the patients have to go through from entrance into the hospital facility to diagnosis and the reception of their medication.

We left the Suntreso hospital and came back to KNUST where we had lunch before meeting with the civil engineers to discuss writing a report and making possible recommendations for the communities that we visited in order to improve their sanitation and water supply. We arrived at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital’s Nursing Training School at about 2.30pm where we presented our Tuberculosis Triaging system to the students and received their questions which ranged from the usefulness of our algorithm and project to concerns about data contamination and invalidation. From KATH, we made a final run through KFC to grab dinner before making our way back to the guest house to enjoy our meal and conclude the day.

APOC in Ghana 2019: May 21st

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

On this beautiful Tuesday, we woke up at our hotel to a lovely breakfast of sausage and pepper omelets. After our meal we loaded up on the bus to drive over to Aprade. On the way to Aprade we picked up our water and sanitation expert of friends: Sophia, Kingsley, and Alfred. We first stopped at Aprade Government School where we met with the entire population of the school to present a demonstration on hand-washing. After the presentation we took a tour of the school to survey their existing water and sanitation systems. We learned about their construction projects and about the school itself, which educates about six hundred students!

Our second stop was to the main village of Aprade. We were taken through the village and observed their rainwater collection systems and boreholes. We discovered the public and private boreholes around the village. Everyone was so hospitable and welcoming. Before continuing we took a quick break to eat lunch on the bus. The food was catered and we had a delicious meal of jollof rice and fried chicken. There was refreshing mango and ginger juice to cool us down from the hot day.

After lunch we drove over to Mmeswam. We were able to make an appointment with the Chief! He brought us into his home with welcoming arms; it was amazing being able to shake the chief’s hand. The chief showed us around Mmeswam and led us to his boreholes and wells. The main borehole pumps water to a large elevated tank. Underneath that tank is a pipe and valve mechanism where villagers come to collect water in large basins. The chief encouraged us to take the basin on our heads and try to carry some of the water. Ellie, Kyler and El were chosen among the group to test their strength.

From the boreholes we walked over to the village’s wells. The oldest well was spoiled and is unusable. The working well in the village was a traditional pulley system well. Several of our students cast the bucket and fished up some water. After our day of water we thanked the chief and hopped back on the bus. We drove back to campus, dropped off the graduate students at campus, and made a stop at the mall. We grabbed dinner at Game and quickly made our way home. It had been a long day so we chowed down on dinner and passed out for the night. A great and very busy day!

APOC in Ghana 2019: May 20th

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

by Allaire Morgan (Electrical Engineering, ’22)

This wasn’t your typical 8:00 A.M.

The bus came and picked us up just after 8 and took us to the Kwame Nkruma University of Science and Technology (KNUST, for short) for our orientation to the program. We pulled into a small lot guarded by a fence and some old barbed wire to greet Professor Ellis Owusu-Dabo, a charismatic and accomplished professor in public health in Ghana. We were ushered to a board room where we began a meeting with Ghanaian students and professors. They sang their national anthem, and then asked us to sing the Penn fight song—which we learned the words to the night before in the hostel. Throughout the morning, we heard remarks from Professor Ellis as well as his distinguished colleagues regarding the program and introducing us to the university. Then we closed the session with a prayer, as is custom in a Christian nation such as Ghana, and went to have lunch and tour the university some more.

During our lunch break, I got the chance to chat with Kingsley, a Nigerian student at KNUST in the Water Supply Management program (the program gathers students from all over West Africa to train them as young “water professionals” to better combine ideas from across the region). Kingsley was very passionate about the field he worked in, explaining that about 90% of the issues related to public health and electricity in Ghana and the region at large were due to issues with the water supply—whether it be sanitation or accessibility in general.

As we toured the university by bus, I talked to Kingsley some more about water systems currently in place, to which he explained the role of politics in the amount of technology able to be implemented. “Trust me, we have the technology,” he exclaimed. “It’s just the will of the people, and the government, that prevent us from using it.” The government here is peculiar compared to that of the United States: Where we had always been focused on separation of state and church, religion and culture here serve as the two strongest influences on the government and their decision-making, which can serve both as a blessing and a curse in some cases like that of water supply funding.

We wrapped up our tour of the university, which looked verydifferent from Penn with its vast fields and cream-and-orange-colored buildings in all their glory. The afternoon session introduced us to the most prevalent medical problems in Ghana to date, as well as giving us a general idea of what the Ghanaian health system looks like. We were given guidance on our project which we had prepared during the spring, and then promptly sent on our way before the sunset, which abruptly ends each day around 6:30 P.M.

APOC in Ghana 2019: May 19th

In this series of posts, University of Pennsylvania students who took the spring 2019 APOC (Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics) course write about their experience traveling to Ghana in May-June 2019.

by Ellie Chen (Bioengineering, ’22)

Waking up early to the sound of rooster calls, we washed up, ate, and got ready for our 9:30 am church service. As we drew close to the location, the bus began to rumble to the vibrations of worship—indicative of the amount of passion and volume we were about to experience in the first of many parts of the service. Walking out of the bus, we were engulfed by the music of our open-building communion. The amount of evident love, hope, and faith was overwhelming. The three-hour service in and of itself consisted of worship and thanksgivingin which we celebrated many livesas well as a sermon, all of which held a consistently amplified energy, song, and dance.

By the time we got out of service, our stomachs were once again rumbling and we were ready to eat. We sat down for a traditional Ghanaian meal: jhollof rice and fufu. Careful to not use our left hand, we scooped our fufu in our hands and downed many servings, supplemented by the delicious jhollof rice and protein of our choice. Many salads were left untouched.

Plates emptied and stomachs refilled, we set out to our first football (or, as we know it, soccer) game. Sitting down in the stadium filled with cheering fans, we tried to discern which team to cheer for. We decided upon Allie’s favorite color: yellow. Unfortunately, after consulting a local, we found out that the players in the yellow jerseys were of a team far from here, and the red-jerseyed team was the local—the one we should be cheering for. This was good information to have because the game ended in a 2-0 win for our local team.

Post-football game, we wandered our way into the mall, picking up carelessly forgotten essentials and dinner. For the majority of us, this was curry rice, chicken, and kebabs—which ended up being too spicy for everybody except El. We ate. We planned. We debriefed and went to bed, ready for orientation tomorrow.

APOC Ghana 2018: Day 11

By Shihan Dong, Biotechnology MS ’19; Xuanjie (Lucas) Gong, Biotechnology MS ’19; and Princess Aghayere, Health & Societies ‘19

Ghana 2018
From left to right: KNUST medical student Kwabena Asoka Sarpong, Penn students Ethan Zhao, Sheldon Amoo-Mitchual, Rebecca Zappala, Yasmina Al Ghadban, and KNUST medical student Muti Agyekum present to Christ Apostolic church on the causes and prevention of cancer.

As usual, today we left for to visit the psychiatric ward of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), the biggest hospital in Kumasi and the second biggest in Ghana. However, when we arrived at the KATH it turned out that the clinic wasn’t ready for our visit, because there was a mix-up with the letter sent to inform them of our visit. So, we went back to School of Public Health to access to internet to let everyone research  and work on their projects.

In the evening we returned to Christ Apostolic Church, a church for women who are poorly educated and mostly petty traders. Last Tuesday, we spoke to inform them about nutrition. This time, presentation was delivered by Ethan Zhao, Sheldon Amoo-Mitchual, Rebecca Zappala and Yasmina Al Ghadban, with KNUST medical students Kwabena Asoka Sarpong and Muti Agyekum as translators.

Ghana 2018
The APOC team sings a praise song in Twi for the congregation at Christ Apostolic church

Since last time there was a woman asked us to talk about cervical cancer, we decided talk about that as well as about cancer in general this time. At first, Ethan introduced the cancer was the result of cellular instructions being modified, and that there are ways to either protect those instructions or increase the risk of modification. Next, Sheldon talked about the importance of nutrition in cancer prevention, as introduced in last week, as well as the importance of good habits like exercising regularly and not smoking. Then, Rebecca introduced prevent cervical cancer and how to help prevent it through things like HPV vaccines and diagnosing it at early stages through Pap smear test. Finally, Yasmina covered the breast cancer, another cancer prevalent among women. She introduced that everyone is at risk of it and some certain factors would increase the risk like family breast cancer history. She taught them the self-exam, and recommended that women over 40 get a mammogram annually. During the question section, the audience was really active to ask questions, so much so that the other group that was supposed to present on pregnancy, Amber Figueroa, Bosede Ajiboye, and Summer Kollie had to be rescheduled to present next week. The churchgoers were curious about things like how and how often they should wash genitals area, as well as how to take care of their pre-pubescent daughters. They also wanted to clarify some rumors they were told about the causes of cancer, such as if things like phone vibration, or putting a phone to the left ear could cause cancer.

After the presentation, we sang a simple church song in Twi, Asem papa bia mate ne s3 oye oye, which we had prepared before coming. The churchgoers were delighted and they joined in, creating beautiful harmonies as our voices combined.

Secondary Projects From Ghana: Group 4

While brainstorming and writing a proposal for a device to detect pediatric tuberculosis has been extremely valuable, we recognize the challenge of developing our devices as undergraduate/graduate students. This acknowledgement led us to try to identify a healthcare problem in Ghana and to come up with a solution that undergraduates could potentially pursue. The process began after we arrived in Ghana, with each student independently identifying a problem and brainstorming a solution. Next, we played an entrepreneurial game, in which each student gave a pitch for an idea, and everyone gave hypothetical money to his or her favorite idea. The ideas with the most hypothetical monetary investments would move on to the next round. After two rounds of pitches, we narrowed our list down to two ideas: Big Data and the Multi-Cot. Splitting up our group between the two ideas, we then prepared a presentation to give to Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) researchers. Yesterday and today, we present the summaries of our ideas.

Ghana group 4-1
The Multi-Cot aims to tackle the issue of limited space in large regional hospitals within Ghana and other similar situations of overcrowding.

Kate Panzer (gave first-round pitch) ’18, Katharine Cocherl ’20, Kaila Helm ’20, Hope McMahon ’18

Throughout our time in Ghana, we had the opportunity to visit many hospitals and smaller health clinics. While visiting Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, Ghana, we noticed that there was a poster on a pediatrician’s wall for the “One Baby One Cot” initiative. We soon learned that there is very limited space per patient at the large regional hospitals — certainly not enough space for each individual baby to occupy his or her own cot. For example, in some hospitals, there can be up to eight babies in one cot! This can be problematic when trying to prevent the spread of infection but also difficult for mothers who have little to no space to watch over their newborns when they stay at the hospital to breastfeed.

There are several implications of having multiple babies in a single cot that we would like to address. First, the risk of hospital-acquired infections greatly increases because of the close contact of the babies. This close contact also makes it difficult for nurses and caretakers to monitor each baby. In addition, many babies may need to be transported to other hospitals because of a lack of bed space, moving the patients and their caretakers farther from home.

Ghana 4-2
The horizontal sliding mechanism of the Multi-Cot allows each newborn to be safely removed from the structure, regardless of the cot level.

Ghana group 4-3

After learning about this problem, we began thinking of ways to decrease the complications associated with having multiple newborns in one cot. During the brainstorming session, the key element that led to our solution was actually how we view the problem. We started to see the issue as a lack of horizontal space – meaning the inability to add more cots horizontally without physically expanding the newborn ward. If expanding the horizontal space is not possible, then why not try to make better use of the vertical space that is already available? This concept of vertical space led us to the idea of the Multi-Cot, which involves three smaller newborn cots stacked vertically, with space between each cot to provide proper airflow. With clear plastic sides and an open top, each baby would be easily seen from every direction. Finally, to ensure safety when removing newborns from the lower levels, we added a sliding mechanism to our design to allow the lower cots to slide horizontally and eliminate any vertical obstructions when picking up the baby.

As we anticipate developing the Multi-Cot, we must consider multiple factors. Our main consideration is safety, which includes the Multi-Cot’s stability, the visibility of every child, and the ability to be sanitized. Other factors to be considered include the cost, as well as the ease of physical construction and dismantling; however, we would address these details later in the design process.

Secondary Projects From Ghana: Group 3

While brainstorming and writing a proposal for a device to detect pediatric tuberculosis has been extremely valuable, we recognize the challenge of developing our devices as undergraduate/graduate students. This acknowledgement led us to try to identify a healthcare problem in Ghana and to come up with a solution that undergraduates could potentially pursue. The process began after we arrived in Ghana, with each student independently identifying a problem and brainstorming a solution. Next, we played an entrepreneurial game, in which each student gave a pitch for an idea, and everyone gave hypothetical money to his or her favorite idea. The ideas with the most hypothetical monetary investments would move on to the next round. After two rounds of pitches, we narrowed our list down to two ideas: Big Data and the Multi-Cot. Splitting up our group between the two ideas, we then prepared a presentation to give to Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) researchers. Today and Friday we present the summaries of our ideas.

Ghana secondary 3

Big Data: Deciphering Acoustic Trends in Tuberculosis, Pneumonia and Healthy Coughs

David Pontoriero (gave first-round pitch) ’18, Kathleen Givan ’20, Jason Grosz ’19, Danielle Tsougarakis ’20, Ethan Zhao ’19

Our goal was to think of a project that a team of undergraduates at Penn could complete in one year to produce something of value to KCCR in the scope of Ghanaian healthcare. We turned our attention toward big data science and the difficulties in tuberculosis diagnosis. One of the difficulties identified was the lack of diagnostic tools in more remote arms of the healthcare system. This lack leads to unnecessary and numerous referrals to larger care centers, inconveniencing the patient and placing a burden on the efficiency of the healthcare system.

Specifically, the only standard-of-care diagnostic ubiquitous throughout all clinics was patient-reported symptoms — the most notable of which is prolonged coughing. Moreover, this symptom can often be confused with asthma or pneumonia. However, asthma involves bronchial constriction, and TB and pneumonia have different sputum distribution profiles. We theorized that this difference would correlate with differentiated sound profiles for patient coughs or baseline breathing and, subsequently, measurable biomarkers. The idea proposed was that, if blind data could be collected from KCCR with sound recordings of patients coughing and breathing, along with their demographics and final diagnoses, then analyses could be run to produce an algorithm capable of differentiating between each cough or breath. This algorithm could then be extended to a phone app that could be used to more empirically diagnose patients in any setting and increase overall healthcare efficiency.