Evaluation Plan

Most of the African and third world communities are faced with several humanitarian problems. One of the moist affected communities is the Dinka community of Southern Sudan. It suffers from disposed of health conditions, which are attributed to their poor living conditions. The current project uses Mobilize, Assess, Plan, Implement, and Track (MAP-IT) steps in developing the evaluation plan for the given community (Dinka). It also evaluates the Capstone project in improving the community’s lifestyle, as well as assessing the effectiveness of the project.

Description of the Aggregate

The Dinka community lives in a region faced with environmental problems that pose health threats to the community. Poor sanitation and inadequate water resources retard the region’s development. Unhygienic conditions raise the prevalence of waterborne and airborne diseases. The project diagnosis involves restorative practices, which are aimed at reducing the impact of the health hazards, supportive practices, which altered the environment to support healthy conditions, and primitive practices that encourage healthy living patterns and include the necessary concepts of addressing environmental factors that affect a community.

Description of the Aggregate’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Weaknesses

The aggregate’s weakness is mainly represented by the roles of the local agencies. They have failed to establish effective policies regarding the poor sanitation and mismanagement of water resources that has curbed the region. No measures have been taken on the conservation of water sources. Therefore, most of water sources that serve the community are polluted, and the agencies have not made any efforts in cleaning them. The available water sources were not enough to serve the growing population. Consequently, the problem created a strain in the available sources.

Secondly, the environment where the members of the Dinka community live is filthy and no strategies to improve the situation have been put in place. Moreover, there are no adequate hospitals to cater for patients, especially considering the fact that there were outbreaks of waterborne and airborne diseases. Polluted environment and water led to the prevalence of both waterborne and airborne diseases (Bartram & Cairncross, 2010). As a result, there was a congestion of patients at the public hospital, which was not adequately facilitated to provide services to the large population.

Such shortcomings resulted in the following issues:

• The throwing away of wastes was not localized: according to the assessment the litter was thrown everywhere, which propagated the spread of diseases.
• Inappropriate burning of wastes: there were no dug pits in the community for burning litter, resulting in generation of wastes.
• Blockage of sewages: blocked sewages had not been attended, which caused polluting the environment and releasing bad smells and evaporations.
• Release of waste production from the factories to water sources. Oil refining factories disposed their wastes to rivers used by the community for water consumption. This problem propagated the spread of waterborne diseases.
• Leakage of oil tanks to water sources. Old and worn out oil tanks leaked oil to water sources. In addition to posing a health hazard, it caused the extinction of some fish species.

Strengths

The aggregate’s main strength is that it is situated in a region with vast oil deposits. Most of the residents work in these mines where they receive their salaries. Exploitation of the oil reserves can also provide a source of developing the region. The benefits gained from the sale of petroleum can be used to construct water reservoirs. The local agencies needed to find ways of optimizing the mining of oil to create revenue for the community.

The community also has a large labor force, since most of the people are unemployed. When explored to the fullest, this labor force can be beneficial to the community. The available people can be used to dig water reservoirs, including boreholes and wells for the community. Such strategy would, in turn, increase water availability for domestic use. Consequently, waters from the rivers could be used in agricultural purposes, such as irrigation. Lastly, the people of the community possess large lands where they can perform small-scale farming. These lands are very fertile, since they have not been actively used.

Risk Assessment of the Aggregate

Before the diagnosis, an assessment was performed, which is the phase when data concerning the community’s state of health was gathered. It included examining health trends of the community over the past years. The diagnosis then identified and described the health problems within the community. There was a routine consideration of all the environmental factors, which pose threats to the community’s health.

The information was gathered through an interview with the community members. The assessment was conducted from house to house. The questions asked considered the problems they face, reactions of the agencies to the problems, the duration of the problems, and their recommendations for solving it. The assessment team traversed through the region to confirm the residents’ complaints and analyzed the possibilities of the recommendations. This exercise was completed within a period of one month.

Diagnoses Based on the Risk Assessment

According to the risk assessment conducted, the team formed a care plan and a disaster management plan to curb the community’s problems. The following care plan was implemented in the Dinka community. The community was mainly threatened by disasters associated with inadequate water supplies, waste, and water pollution. Such conditions can pose grave threats to the health of the community (Gil, Selma, López-Gálvez, & Allende, 2009).

The following issues were addressed in the care plan:

1. Food contamination: the community members are at risk of consuming contaminated food. This problem occurred due to lack of training in questions regarding home sanitation. The community is also at risk of hand to mouth transmission of diseases. Such diseases occur when there is inadequate water to be used for personal hygiene (Sigel, Altantuul & Basandorj, 2012). The water and food consumed may also be contaminated in the polluted environment.
2. Contamination and depletion of water resources: there is a poor management of human wastes, which greatly influences safety of water resources.
3. Inadequate water supplies: it hindered quality provision of services at the health centers. The problem affects both the health workers and health facilities.
4. Pathogenic risks which result from the exposure to clinical waste, which may result in contracting HIV, Hepatitis B, and hemorrhagic fever. Research reveals that 30% of the medical waste is infectious (Cairncross, Hunt, Boisson, Bostoen, Curtis, Fung & Schmidt, 2010).
5. Malaria outbreak and other vector-borne diseases. This problem is as a result of dumpy and piled wastes that host such vectors as mosquitoes and flies.

Care Plan

The results of the risk assessment showed that the local agencies should create a team that will handle the issues affecting the Dinka community. The formed team will be required to perform the following tasks:

1. Create an environmental cleaning program that will maintain sanity in the environment.
2. Solve the water pollution problem by restricting factories from disposing of wastes in the water bodies. They should further form a water cleaning program that will ensure that water resources are regularly cleaned.

• Sensitize the community on the health threats facing them. This objective will be achieved by organizing educational programs for the community, where they will be taught on hygiene measures. They ought to be taught on the issue of incorrect waste disposal and ways of treating water for safe drinking. This role is the most important for the team because individual sensitization marks the beginning of a change in the whole community. Besides being educated in the environment, the community should be taught about sanitation at their homes, such as, for example, hand washing.

1. The team should call the government to provide adequate facilities to the public hospital. Enough facilities will curb the spread of the airborne and waterborne diseases.
2. The team should strive for building more water reservoirs to serve the whole community. The community needs to learn about water conservation to prevent wastage of the few available sources.

Disaster Management Plan

The above disasters could be solved through the following comprehensive disaster management plan that catered for the experienced water and waste issues.

1. Creating and maintaining water systems and the environment’s sanitation.
2. Conducting assessments on vulnerability of water supplies and sanitation systems to evaluate the ability to provide essential services during a disaster.
3. Engaging the community in planning services aimed at safe water drinking, and safe waste disposal. In addition, the community has to be engaged in identifying socially and culturally acceptable interventions that provide long-lasting solutions.
4. Sensitizing the community to ensure a multi-sectoral approach in the disaster management for safe water drinking and waste disposal.
5. Providing the community with enough water resources and accessible sanitation services in times of a disaster to manage incidences of contamination.
6. Prevent the spread of infections by educating the community and promoting hygienic issues, such as hand washing.
7. Ensuring that temporary shelters and camps are accessible to safe water sources and sanitation.
8. Ensuring an adequate supply of water for health facilities in support of the quality health care services provision during emergencies.
9. Water treatment and disinfection campaigns.
10. Preventing defecation of children in places with contaminated water sources.
11. Providing a safe means by which clinical wastes can be disposed.

Description of Intervention Implementation

Regarding poor sanitation, the first procedure was to organize a meeting with the locals and explain to them the health hazards that threatened them due to poor hygiene. They were taught on safe disposal measures and home cleanliness. They were further enlightened on personal hygiene measures, such as washing hands as the basis for disease prevention. The team then mobilized youths to dig pits where waste products would be thrown away and burnt.

The team visited the factories concerned with waste disposal to water sources and had a meeting with their management. They agreed to comply, and the project expected that the river water would be safe for drinking after three months of treatment. The team hired water cleaning services to remove waste from the rivers and treat the water for it to be safe for domestic use.

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Intervention

Three months after the assessment and implementation of the project, the team went back to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions that had been recommended. The remarkable immediate changes included the cleanliness of the water resources and expansion of the reservoirs. The public hospitals showed a decrease in the proportion of individuals admitted for airborne and waterborne diseases. Such observation was a result of improved sanitation in the region. There was also a reduction in diseases caused by clinical wastes.

The agricultural sector revealed an improvement, which resulted in the fact that the locals planted more crop types than before due to the readily available water. Most of the community members became engaged in farming and the trade of farm products. These activities were helpful in ensuring food security for the community.

The general economic development took a longer time except for the agricultural activities. The recruitment and training of people who would work in the oil mines were slow due to the slow reactions of the government. Though, after one year the community began to experience benefits from the mines. The developed economy enabled the Dinka people to admit their children to higher learning establishments. There was a 20 percent increase in the admission to the surrounding public institutions.

In conclusion, it is clear that the project was effective in solving the issues disturbing the Dinka community. The one-year results are recommendable, since the previous conditions of the region were negative and harmful. Thus, the care plan and disaster management plan can be used in any other community experiencing the same problems.

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