Next visit is a few minutes by car away from Prieta, in a community called Lérida (Tocoa region). Axa Maridela Lobo (brown corduroy shirt) is a community health worker who receives people at her home who want to get tested for malaria. She has a metal cabinet with all the things she needs to perform (non-rapid) tests. She doesn’t get paid. There is a signup form for the patient. Axa takes a blood sample, submits the 2nd drop of blood for lab testing. The man seen being tested is actually a doctor working with the Priety health center who was with us.

Once a month, technicians visit Axa’s home to replenish her cabinet (seen in the background of the photo above) and to collect blood samples, and bring them to Tocoa for analysis. From pick-up, it takes about one day to get the test results back. When urgent, Axa would bring the slides herself to the health center lab.
Axa keeps a record of all activities that take place at her ”station”

Every community has its own community health worker. Axa covers about 250 people. Some of these people go directly to the clinic, because it’s not that far from her home…

Axa: “My biggest satisfaction is to serve people in the community and seeing people get better.”

Axa had malaria herself 10 or 15 years ago. She believes that the spraying and LLIN distribution really helped reduce malaria cases. She has seen a particular drop in the number of cases starting three months ago or so.