Patrick Mbugua is a Clinical Specialist at Grounds for Health based in Kenya. Growing up in Kirinyaga, Kenya, Patrick has always been surrounded by coffee. As a child, his parents grew coffee and today he has 300 coffee plants of his own. While he sells his Kirinyaga coffee to a local cooperative (Kibirigwi Cooperative, for anyone curious!), Patrick’s career has been based around supporting women's health outcomes. Prior to joining the Grounds for Health (GnH) team, he was a trained Registered Community Health Nurse with the Kenyan Ministry of Health where he coordinated reproductive health services in Nyeri county. After retiring, he volunteered screening and treating women for cervical cancer, and then joined the Grounds for Health team in February 2020.
Hot coffee with some hot milk added.
The joys of working in coffee growing communities with Grounds for Health is that we get to work with women in the communities to prevent them from getting cervical cancer. They often come back and say if I was not screened, especially if a client had a precancerous condition that was treated, she says “if I had not come for screening then maybe by now I would have died, but because of that screening I am alive.” These moments you really get the feeling that you helped someone.
It can be challenging to get women to come get screening. They don’t always want to know if they have cervical cancer and so they may not want to come for screening. Part of this is that they don’t always know it to be treatable, so even if they find out they have it, they’d rather not know sooner. So, educating women about the screening process and treatment and convincing women to get screening is a big part of our work.
After women are screened, we ask them to inform others that they have been screened, how the screening is done, and why others shouldn’t fear to be screened. They tell their friends that if you are screened and if you are at a pre cancer stage you will be treated and prevented from getting to the cancer stage so they should not fear to be screened. One example of this is that recently, five women were questioning whether to come or not. One of them who was courageous told her friends that she would go for screening and then let them know about it after she was screened. So, she got screened and then called the other women to explain to them what was done and how. Afterwards they also decided to be screened.
I am able to help by keeping women healthy. Women are the main actors in the coffee industry and when they remain healthy, they are able to participate fully in coffee production activities.
I would like to see more women involved in senior positions in the coffee industry. Primarily, involving women in management. I have seen some of this start to happen in some of the coffee factories, at least in one I know the manager is a woman. At present, more women are in more leadership positions compared to our parents’ time. At our parents’ time, women were not seen in these senior positions. You only used to see men. But these days we are starting to see change.
When a woman is in a senior position, she is able to inform the women. She shares the same issues with them and faces the same issues they face. When a group is informed by someone of their same sex they tend to listen because they know that person has the same needs as they do.
Hearing clients tell us that they were helped, they are treated, they are healthy. The feedback from the community members, the women who have been helped, encourages us to continue the service.
We are grateful for all those who support us, and the support goes a long distance in helping women survive for a long time in Kenya.
