Meet your Fulbrighter
Community health advocate: Lancina Doumbia’s story
By: Boitshepo Balozwi
Lancina Doumbia (34) is in Fayetteville Arkansas on a Fulbright Scholarship, doing his Masters in Community Health Promotion. Doumbia was born in Bamako, the capital city of Mali in West Africa which he describes as having, “happy, vibrant and hospitable people.” He is a married father of two young girls, whom he says he misses dearly. Doumbia is a General Medical Practitioner, who is working in Bamako, Mali for a community health center called the Centre de Sante Communautaire de Daoudabougou (ADASCO).
For the close to six years that he has been practicing as a doctor at the center, he has observed certain patterns that have lead him to Arkansas to seek skills in the area of community health promotion. In the last Demographic Health Survey conducted in his home country, results indicated that there is a high mortality rate among the population of women and children in Mali; children die at the tender age of 0 – 5 years and women lose their lives because they did not seek and follow up with antenatal and/or postnatal care before and after child birth. Likewise majority of his patients at the clinic are women and children, mainly kids under the ages of five years.
His patients usually come presenting symptoms of communicable diseases, those that are spread from one person to the next. “The sad thing is that communicable diseases are easily preventable,” he says. He lists the common such diseases in his community as Malaria, Diarrheal diseases, Typhoid and Pneumonia. “We are also faced with the issue of mothers preventing HIV from being transmitted to their babies under the Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission program,” he says. As such, it is primarily the women and children that he treats at the medical center, who he is targeting for health education and the behavior change program that he intends to formulate and implement when he has completed his MA.
The aim is to create awareness and share information, to help his community to adopt healthier behaviors and lifestyles. He envisions these campaigns as constant reminders for people to go back to the basics such as simply washing their hands, particularly before handling meals. Doumbia notices a tendency for people to seek medical care, sometimes when it is too late. He is aware that in certain instances, there are other factors that influence people’s behaviors towards accessing health care such as one’s economic status and traditional and cultural influences; practices inherited from family, which are not always understood but followed nonetheless. “I often hear patients talk about how their parents, passed on to them, whatever traditional medication they are using,” adds the public health advocate. The ultimate agenda for Doumbia is to contribute to the development of his community by making it healthy through health education and the promotion of healthier behaviors.
He points out that the health sector is a key economical component for any developing country; therefore he sees it as critical to have a strong health care system. The public health advocate explains that people in his home country, should be conscious of the fact that there is a shortage of health care professionals and more now than ever, individuals need to play their part and work together with health workers when it comes to maintaining good health, he gives Ebola as an example. “Community health is more than just about us as individuals, it is about making the whole country of Mali healthy. Health issues are a risk to humanity and together we can, if we listen and change behaviors as advised,” says Doumbia.