Anemia project wrap-up

I was aiming to accomplish three main goals this week: 1) to retest all the women in my group to see how much higher their Hemoglobin counts are after taking iron pills for two months; 2) to put an ad in the local paper outlining the successes of this group in Jatavas; and 3) to conduct the town-wide health survey.
I was able to retest 7 of the 10 women in the group this week and the results were excellent! All 7 of the women had increased their HB counts by at least 2.6 g/dL, and up to 4.2 g/dL. Most of the women were able to feel the difference in their energy level and some reported relief from other more concrete symptoms like numbness in the hands and feet. Much to my dismay, there were a couple in the group whose HB counts did rise, but did not report any noticeable differences in their health. In fact, the woman with the highest HB difference thus far (at 4.2 g/dl, from 8.8 g/dl to 13 g/dl) said she does not notice any difference. This is unfortunate because much of this study was based on the hope that women would feel less tired and weak after the iron pills and therefore understand that they were not taking care of their health previously. I was unable to test the three remaining women because they are currently out of town but I am hoping to get their post-study HB counts next week before my departure. I am hoping to see equally promising results in these remaining three women.
In order to give these women a sense of pride in their active participation in this study, I wanted to publish an article about their achievement in the local newspaper. I decided to push this goal back to next week simply because there are three women left to be tested and I would like to include their names in the paper but do not want to proceed until they have been tested and I have been able to ask their consent. In anticipation of printing this article, I did ask all the women that I retested if I would be able to publish their names in the paper, as well as a group picture of them all. I was pleasantly surprised to see most of them receive the question with a bashful smile, and the approving nod that followed showed a sense of pride that surpassed my expectation. My hope was that this experiment would increase anemia awareness within the group and hopefully instill a general importance of women’s health. Although empowerment was not an operating objective, I realize now that this is a critical success that came out of the study.
In addition to wrapping up the anemia awareness project, I was hoping to conduct the health survey by the week’s end. Unfortunately, this goal was not met for several reasons. I had a pilot survey conducted before proceeding further and this process took up more time than I had anticipated. In addition, the pilot revealed some significant shortcomings in the survey which have required time to remedy. I am hoping to have the survey completed by the end of Tuesday, June 26th. This will give me a couple days to compile and analyze the results. .