my Leadership essay for Chevening
Being able to leave a mark is what makes it worthwhile to get up in the morning, as a competent health leader serving the ill-health especially to the less fortunate is the fundamental basis of my pursuit. During my third year of medical studies in 2009, I got elected as the chairman of the Tanzania Medical Students 'Association Environment and Public Health committee. I led during my two years tenure of office in tropical communicable diseases (HIV, TB and Malaria) a medical student public health campaign in areas around mining sites educating about prevention strategies to the community. The inhabitants of the village expressed to us their challenges with regards to disease transmission and burden they face as the consequence of these diseases.
By the time I graduated as a medical doctor, I could see some improvements in regard to the level of the diseases preventive strategies and health-seeking behavior awareness although not to the level I would desire it to attain. I later joined a research team in Shinyanga Tanzania being led by Dr Sandra Maccoy immediately following my internship program. We particularly focused on improving health outcomes and lives of people living with HIV through food and cash transfer intervention. I learned the competitive demands communities have on health over social needs and how they would determine the health-seeking behavior. Men and women were skipping their clinics as they had responsibility cater for their families' food and shelter. Since food was scarce many were refraining from taking medications as they believed would make them more sick referring to "ARV are strong if one hasn't eaten".
I led the team in comparing what would mostly affect adherence between cash and food transfer in comparison to the standard care. I spent the majority of my waking hours in it and I enjoyed every minute of it .The interventions improved their adherence to medication and consequently their treatment outcome.
Despite a tough choice to leave my team and join Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation following family issues, I continued furthering what I had learned in the study that incited my devotion to work to impact on the people's lives such as those living with HIV.Here, I realized the majority of children did not know why they are attending the clinics hence ending up losing them from treatment, I learnt no one as willing to inform them explicitly due several reasons such as parents are worried they would blame them as they got from them, health care workers were burdened with load of clients and they felt they should know now. This touched me and decided to embark on searching for a solution. I took an initiative to develop a study to understanding how best to communicate HIV status to children. The findings of this study led to the review of the psychosocial support clubs we were running, drastically cutting down on treatment loss to follow up and significantly increasing adherence to care and eventually treatment outcomes and prevention of new infections
