The PRECISE Star of the Month in November at The Gambia is Lawrence Gibba, Data Support Assistant (DSA) in Farafenni. He supports all areas of data management, from printing participant IDs, kit bag labels, setting up the tablets for the data collectors and of course data cleaning. We asked Lawrence to tell us in his own words about his experience as part of PRECISE:

“Alu PRECISE inchi kichan na lu pulon pano pan pa neyem.” This is in my mother tongue Karoninka and it means “Greetings to all PRECISE wherever you are.”

I have been working for the MRCG @ LSHTM since 2010. Over the years, I have worked with 5 different databases in 3 big MRCG stations across the country, namely Fajara, Basse and Farafenni. The 8 projects I have been involved with range from malaria, tobacco use, to pregnancy. I believe I have contributed to generating good quality data – recently a PhD student based  their research on data I worked on. I am looking forward to gaining more data skills by conducting online courses and expanding my experience and skills in data management through my work in PRECISE.

My latest personal highlights would regard developing strategies to cope in difficult situations such as the COVID pandemic – personally and within the study. I learned to conduct training and interact with different staff.

I believe the PRECISE study helps the countries in sub-Saharan Africa by contributing to the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity.

“Timpa timpa PRECISE” – Thank you PRECISE.