Rehabilitation Project At My Village Health Clinic

Greetings from Burkina! Life here is going well as I am closing in on my final months

of Peace Corps service. I cannot believe that my two years will be over in December!

.Time has flown by and I am finally at the point of contemplating my final in village

project. My village health clinic and my head nurse have been so great to me over

the last two years that I wanted to fulfill one last funding wish before I leave. Since

arriving at my site in December 2010 my head nurse and clinic staff have been

talking about needing new mattresses for our hospitalization beds and a new

outdoor hangar for holding educational sessions, demonstrations and nutritional

consultations with young mothers. After working together for two years and seeing

the inadequacy of the hangar and the unsanitary condition of the mattresses I

approached my head nurse to plan out and budget one final project – to rehabilitate

the clinic that has taught me so much over the last two years.

The overall project will consist of purchasing 15 new plastic coated mattresses, a

new plastic coated birthing table and enlarging our existing hangar. I have added

pictures below to show the current state of the materials and I hope it is obvious

how necessary it is that the clinic replaces these deteriorating items. There are

not enough mattresses to cover all of the beds and the existing mattresses are in

such worn condition that patients often do not wish to use them. Replacing the

mattresses would not only improve the quality of care at the clinic but it would

improve the overall sanitation of the facilities. The current mats are incredibly

unhygienic with all of the exposed foam and the number of bodily fluids passed by

extremely sick, elderly or young patients. In addition they are impossible to wash,

making sanitation standards impossible to enforce at the clinic. New mattresses

would give our patients a more comfortable place to recover and increase the level

of hygiene and sanitation at the clinic.

Baby sick with serious malaria at the clinic. The mattress is so destroyed that the parents had to place him on fabric from home so that he could comfortably sleep. You can see the tear on the right hand side where the foam is busting out of the plastic covering and all of the small cracks throughout the mattress. 

Unfit mattresses in the hospitalization ward at the clinic. Both have rips and foam exposed. There are also several beds without mattresses at all, forcing patients to sleep on the ground.  

The birthing table in the maternity building is in the same condition as the

mattresses and desperately needs to be replaced. The exposed foam is extremely

unhygienic as it can retain all of the fluids present during birth and transmit

infections from woman to woman. There are very few comforts available for

a woman giving birth in village, but a clean and comfortable birthing table is

something that can be provided. This new table will help to ensure the health and

safety of the roughly 500 women who give birth at our maternity each year.

Current birthing table at the maternity.

Old birthing table at the maternity.

Finally, the enlargement of the hangar is necessary to improve working conditions

and ensure that more community members benefit from important educational

session on topics like nutrition, hand washing and malaria. The current structure

cannot accommodate all of the community members who attend our weekly

nutritional consultations and educational sessions. Most women are left standing

outside of the hangar, out of earshot and in the sun. Enlarging the hangar will allow

us to better serve our growing population while providing an improved working

space for the clinic staff.

The outdoor hangar during an educational session on malnutrition.  You can see that the hangar is so crowded that most women are forced to stand at the edges our outside the hangar. This was a relatively small gathering compared to our weekly nutritional consultations, so you can imagine the insufficiency of the hangar compared to the size of our audience. 

The empty hangar - too small to hold the approximately 100 women who have every Friday for nutritional consultations. 

I know so many of you have already supported me in more ways than one, but this

project is not only for me but for the over 6000 inhabitants of my village. I left home

almost two years ago to experience health care from the village perspective in this

little know West African country. This clinic has taught me more about international

health than I can ever repay, but this project is a great starting point. If you are able,

please donate to my rehabilitation project so that together we can improve the

health and quality of life for my friends and neighbors here in Burkina. To donate

you can click on the link below or you can search for my project (# 686-228) on the

Peace Corps website. All donations are tax deductible.

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-228

My hope is that I can raise the necessary $2,475.56 by the end of August so that

we will be able to start work in village in September. I have a limited time frame

to complete this project as it must be completed by the time I finish my service in

December. This project will benefit my village for years to come, so please donate

anything you can! Again, I cannot thank everyone enough for your continued

thoughts and support. I would not have made it through these last two years

without my amazing network of family and friends back in the States. Thank you

from the bottom of my heart and I can’t wait to send out pictures of the final product

post rehabilitation!!

Merci Beaucoup!!

Anna

PS: If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me via email

(awcallaghan@gmail.com) or Facebook