First day at the exhibition

When I was approached by a private college student during my clinic duty 2 weeks ago, seeking our help to organise an HIV awareness programme at their college, I immediately agreed to help out even without seeking approval from the Buddies board members. College students are the best targets for our awareness campaigns as youths are the ones who are most exposed to ways and means of getting infected if they don't get the proper knowledge on the matter.

All the student asked for were exhibition materials for 3 days and a speaker for the talk on the last day. We didn't have to man the exhibition so I didn't have to worry about getting any volunteers to do so. I wouldn't be able to get any as the exhibition is held on working days.

But the main reason I wasn't worried about not getting any volunteers to help out was because I knew I could use our networking with the Perak Family Health Association (PFHA). So we Buddies will handle the talk, and we sub the exhibition to PFHA. PFHA has the staff to man (oh okay, woman) the exhibition, so if there were any questions, there'd be someone able to answer.

To make life easier for the PFHA staff, they decided to seek help from their contacts at the Unit Pendidikan of the Pejabat Kesihatan Daerah to get the exhibition materials. You see, by doing that, the Pejabat Kesihatan would send their people to put up everything, so the PFHA staff didn't have to worry about sweating it out to put up the materials.

So guess what? The students just had to approach one party (that's us Buddies) and end up having 3 different parties networking together. Buddies sub to PFHA, PFHA sub to Pejabat Kesihatan, finally everything sub sub soi!!

The exhibition started today. I did go over in the afternoon to check it out. Other than the exhibition, PFHA is also providing blood tests at cheaper rates for those who may want to do so. There are a few options offered, they can go for the full blood test, or HIV test, or Lipid test, or just to find out their blood type. Today we were trying to get the students to sign up for the blood tests which will be done on Thursday morning. I'm helping out the PFHA staff to give pre-test counseling to those who signed up just for the HIV test. Surely they have their own reasons for wanting to do just the HIV test, so they'd need to know more details. Quite a number of those whom I met today didn't know what window period meant. "Window oso got period ah?" Haiya...

I signed up for a full blood test. It's been 2 years since my last blood test, let's see if my cholesterol level is still a borderline case. Some of the students approached, girls and boys, are so so afraid of needles! Probably in future we need to think of other ways to get their blood samples instead of using needles... like using a parang, maybe? Hehehe...

Other than that, a blood donation drive will also be held tomorrow. Forget the takut jarum people lah to volunteer for that one. Anyway, since I usually only donate blood whenever I bump into a blood donation drive, and it has been 3 months since my last blood donation, I think I will probably let them suck my blood another round. :)

As for the talk on the last day, a fellow buddy had actually earlier on agreed to do the talk, but this morning when I called her, she was down with flu and sore throat and cough, and so she asked me to get a standby speaker. Well, since she just came back from Singapore, almost everybody she spoke to told her to quarantine herself at home! I wouldn't want to take the risk either. So very likely I will have to deliver the talk myself.

Now to get the presentation materials ready... it's already in my thumb drive, I'm using the powerpoint presentation prepared by MAC, but the statistics had not been updated yet. I'd better look through and update the statistics pages before I go for the talk on Thursday.