2nd Quarter: April through June 2017
Government Permissions: We received permissions from government ministries, such as Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Post & Telecommunications in order to support our request from the National Ethical Committee for Health Research for the trial that we plan to conduct on effects of voice messaging and on the use of 12 Inch Tablets by the Peer Educators. And then we also received the NECHR permission, so we can start.
We contracted Women’s Media Association to speak in the 35 voice messages that we plan to use for sending to our diabetes patients during the trial that is about to start.
On June 14th, we held an Advisory Board Meeting with different experts, chaired by NIPH Director Chhea Chhorvann, including participants from MoH, and our partners, in order to review the study preparation and get suggestions.
TIN: We obtained VAT TIN registration in May 2017.
Sustainable Medical Consultations:”We visited all the OD’s with a peer educator network, one by one, in order to negotiate a new standardized arrangement for the medical consultations. Since 2007, we hired medical doctors from Phnom Penh to travel to remote hospitals to carry out medical consultations as the local doctors were not interested. The majority of the related cost were paid for by donors. By showing in each location how the income generation from selling the medical consultations work, we were able to transform the system into a sustainable, locally owned system that reduces our cost but allows that system to continue in a sustainable fashion. The big difference is that the local government doctors will perform the medical consultations, but the rest of the system stays the same. This saves an enormous amount of money and makes the peer educator network more sustainable and expandable.
Training of Medical Doctors: In contracted Center of Hope for conducting training of 14 rural doctors to provide them 14 day on the job training in Medical Consultation of Diabetes and Hypertension, starting July, in groups of 2 doctors each time to be coached in practice and theory at their hospital.