MedTreks Kenya

Our MedTreks team just returned from our time in Kenya working with Village HopeCore International. As always, it was a week full of education, training, collaboration, laughter and of course competition, as we had our annual Kenya VS U.S soccer match! (Kenya won during penalty kicks!) Here are a few highlights from our trip: 

1. Helping Babies Breathe: Our MedTreks team trained and certified 20 HopeCore staff on the course, Helping Babies Breathe. In addition to this training, MedTreks certified 2 HopeCore staff to be certified instructors of Helping Babies Breathe, they will now be ready to teach and certify other Kenyan's in their community! We were grateful to the Perinatal Rescue Association for sponsoring this training. 

2.  Telemedicine in Kenya: we successfully initiated our Telehealth program in Kenya. Each of our nurses at HopeCore has tablets that they use daily during the mobile clinics. We installed the telehealth application and trained our nurses on the basics of navigating the application. Our MedTreks team looks forward to providing ongoing training and consultation to our medical staff in Kenya through Telehealth in the future! 

Thank you for your continued support and helping our program expand! 

Greetings,

Our MedTreks program has continued to expand and we are excited to share some updates on the project. 

As the nursing and community health team continues to grow at HopeCore, there is an even greater need for mentorship and continuing education and training for the staff. Our goal with MedTreks is to provide this opportunity through our MedTreks educational program. We have identified a few new areas that we can help to facilitate training and education for the HopeCore staff. 

1. Educational Newsletter: in May of this year, we started the MedTreks educational newsletter, where several MedTreks members provide articles on pertinent public health topics that would be useful to the staff in Kenya such as basic first aid topics, pediatrics, dermatology, infectious disease, orthopedics, women's health and family medicine. This newsletter will continue on a quarterly basis and we look forward to having feedback from the HopeCore staff on topics that they would like to learn in the future newsletters. 

2. Telemedicine Program: we are very excited about continuing our contribution to facilitating education, training, and consultation the implementation of HopeCore's first Telehealth program. A group of the MedTreks nurses will be returning in July to help set up this very user-friendly Telehealth system for the HopeCore staff. The plan will be to use this for monthly education meetings but also scheduled follow up visits that will be conducted by the HopeCore staff and used to consult with medical providers from MedTreks who will offer medical advice. 

 As we continue to expand, we are fortunate to have such a strong team of dedicated individuals as part of this program, both at MedTreks and HopeCore. 

Thank you for your continued support!