Newsletter – August 2024
We have decided to do e-newsletters going forward, as the cost of producing a print newsletter is expensive, and we know that a lot of newsletters are returned to us as ‘undelivered’ so we feel that an e- newsletter makes much more sense, plus publication on the website.
Volunteers needed
We are also looking for anyone who has IT skills and would be able to help us maintain our website, if you have an hour or so a month to upload content and keep it maintained, we’d love to hear from you. The site is a ‘WordPress’ website and (so we are told) easy to maintain, but we can also offer training if needed. If you think you can help, please email David Holmes on ‘info@kambia.org.uk’.
Angela Allen has found that with three very young children and the demands of GP work, she feels she can’t commit sufficient time to the role. Whilst we completely understand her reasons, we hope to tempt her back when life is a bit saner! We would like to thank Angie for all her help and support to date.
Peter Marlow also stepped down as a trustee earlier this year as he is a trustee of another charity and has found the work involved to be more intense than expected and feels unable to give both charities his full attention, we also thank him for all his help and support over the years.
Shona has stepped down as chair of trustees and handed over the role to David Holmes. Shona has been an outstanding contributor to the success of the Kambia Appeal over the years and we are extremely grateful to her for her chairmanship. We have relied on her depth of knowledge of the charitable sector and her enthusiasm in keeping us moving forward “on track” and so are delighted that she has agreed to stay on as a Trustee.
Activities
So what have we been up to since we helped our Kambia community through Ebola and Covid? It won’t be much of a surprise to learn that we continue to focus on our 3 core elements: scholarships, refurbishment of PHUs (Peripheral Health Units) and our mentoring project. Effective healthcare relies on trained staff, their continuing education and safe facilities for them to work in. We tick all the boxes with our scholarships, mentoring project and PHU refurbishment.
Scholarships
To date we have awarded 43 scholarships and all bar two of the recipients are still working in Kambia.
The government of Sierra Leone is raising the admission standards to the various teaching institutions, which whilst commendable in principle, does present problems for applicants from Kambia.
To undertake study as a midwife now, for example, applicants have to have passed 5 of the core subjects at our equivalent of GCSE. Previously applicants who had gained a qualification as an SECHN (State Enrolled Community Health Nurse) were able to go on to study midwifery, but this route has now been closed.
We are looking to liaise with local secondary schools to advertise that scholarships are available for students who want to enter the healthcare profession in Kambia District and will be promoting this message within the community via local radio and other means.
We currently have 8 students in training, some of whom are nearing the end of their studies.
The cost of training a midwife, including all their tuition fees, living expenses, travel expenses and equipment, is about £800. All our students undertake an agreement to work in Kambia District for at least three years after their qualification.
We fund the training primarily from your donations but have also been successful in applying for grants from charitable trusts.
Peripheral Health Unit Refurbishment
Many of the PHUs in Kambia District are in extremely poor condition. The fabric of the area where babies are delivered is critical to maintaining a safe environment, and the area where staff live (when they are working) important for staff moral.
The District Health Management Team approached us for help to refurbish the worst of the 69 PHUs under their jurisdiction and we have agreed, subject of course to funds being available, to assist with the refurbishment of 1 PHU per year. Over the last few years, we have been able to refurbish the following.: Rokai, Meni Curve and Layagboray.
We are about to start refurbishment of the Macoth PHU in the Mambolo Chiefdom at a cost of approximately £4,800. If only our hospitals could be refurbished as cheaply!
Maternal and Child Health Aides (MCHA) Mentoring Project
Much of the healthcare in the PHUs is given by MCHAs. After they have received their initial 2-year training they are allocated to a PHU, where they work relatively unsupervised. Keen followers of our website will know that prior to Covid we had a successful pilot project which showed that formal mentoring of the relatively “new” MCHAs by experienced healthcare workers improved their knowledge of dealing with the major causes of maternal deaths.
This project seems to have stalled, mainly due to no one leading it from the Kambia side, but we have been assured by the DMO, Dr. Yillia that they are keen to get it started again, so watch this space. We have been told by Moses that GOAL (an Irish NGO) have also been involved in the project, so we are awaiting information on this too. Hopefully we will have more news to share shortly.
Your continuing support of these projects is greatly appreciated. We are a small organisation with few overhead costs, so any money that you donate (or better still Gift Aid) goes directly to one of our schemes.
If you would like to support any of the above projects, you can donate via our website and increase it with Gift Aid.
