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Insight

A camp is not a programme

Both look identical on the day. The difference shows up twelve months later.

A screening camp and a health programme are indistinguishable from the outside. Same tents, same queue, same clinicians, same tired volunteers at four in the afternoon. The difference is entirely in what exists the following year.

Three tests

Can you find the child again? If findings were recorded against a name on a form, no. If they were recorded against an identity the child keeps, yes.

Can you count anything? If the finding was written as prose, no. A sentence cannot be compared with another sentence. Coded at capture, it can.

Did the referral happen? If nobody followed up, you do not know, and if you do not know, the screening produced a finding rather than a treatment.

The cheap version costs more

Running a camp without identity, coding and follow-up is genuinely cheaper per head. It is also self-erasing: every cycle starts from nothing, so the tenth year costs the same as the first and produces no more. The extra spent on doing it properly buys a second cycle that is worth more than the first, and a tenth that describes a population.