This is lifesaving story for my wife and myself. My name is Moses Mulenga, I am 51years married to Mrs Elizabeth Mulenga, who is 44years old. My wife and I have three (3) children. I worked as a miner for Konkola Copper Mine for 26yrs.
Therefore, our health goes like this, the dark moment of our married life started in the month of November 2017, when both my wife and I started facing health problems. We both started experiencing loss of appetite, loss of weight, with wife failing even to drink water. It was really difficult for her to drink even a drop of water. All this was happening in early November, 2017. Then I decided to take my wife to the clinic as her condition was very bad. We visited the clinic three times to which she was only being given antibiotics and Panadol, this never changed anything as I could see that both of us were almost entering the dark continent which could have accommodated one of us.
One bright morning, we were visited by a field officer from DAPP/TIMS who introduced himself working in partnership with Ministry of Health in fighting TB among Ex-miners, Miners, their Families and the Community around them. With the information on TB given to us we felt relieved and to our surprise, we had three or more of the symptoms he mentioned. Thereafter, we were given two small bottles and sputum was collected on spot then three days later the results were given to us showing smear positive.
“From the time we started taking the medication up to date both of us are now ok and our health has greatly improved with our appetite back to normal. We thank DAPP/TIMS for the wonderful work they are doing, because without them a dark cloud was covering over our lives and now it has gone we have a bright cloud.”
“As Mr and Mrs Mulenga we are asking DAPP/TIMS project to continue it’s good works of saving people’s lives, because without them both us we would have been history by now. Please continue with your good works and please don’t stop serving people in the communities.”
This story is no uncommon among members of the community who do not have adequate information about tuberculosis. When people do not understand the causes of their ill-health, they do not access correct treatment and timely in order to get the correct remedy. Health information dissemination is a cornerstone of health service delivery in our communities.
