Community Healthcare in Freetown - Join us!

If you live in the United Kingdom it is easy to take the National Health Service for granted.  We have three children in their twenties and late teens. Two of them have needed medical help. One to survive being born eleven weeks premature and another to overcome a cleft lip and palate. Probably neither would have come through if they had been born in Sierra Leone.

In a poor country, illness is frequently the result of polluted water and insanitary conditions. This is exacerbated by malnutrition, poor education, and the lack of affordable treatments and preventative measures such as mosquito nets.

In Sierra Leone life expectancy at birth of a male is 39 years and a female is 44 years. (The UK average is 79 years). For every 1000 live births, 154 babies are likely to die before their first birthday. 50% of the population is undernourished, and to make things more difficult only 47% of the men and 24% of the women over 15 years of age can read and write.

We can do something about it.  
We are looking to visit Sierra Leone in the first week of March 2010 with a team of people to train and empower local people in basic healthcare principles.

We shall be lead in this by Linden Boothby of Links International. She has a passion for the poor and has lived in Africa working on healthcare-related projects. Having been a manager in a primary care trust in the UK, she brings professional-level skills to help us develop our community healthcare work.

Linden Boothby

We wish to send out a team made up of enthusiastic volunteers, good communicators and people passionate about healthcare.

 What will happen?

Following a needs assessment, training is done using a modular manual. The team will teach healthcare principles to influencers and trainers within the community on the understanding of health in its broadest holistic sense.

 Subjects covered by the modules range from the importance of clean water to sexually transmitted diseases.

The training has been so successful that

• Child mortality rates have been drastically reduced by between 50-80% in many areas around the world.
• A team was sent to train delegates from Nelson Mandela’s home village in South Africa, at his personal invitation.
• Our work has also inspired involvement from regional government, keen to work with us.
• All of the teaching is based on Christian principles and many people begin a relationship with Jesus as a direct result of the transformation that comes to their communities through the training.

The area the team is seeking to reach

(Please click on the photo to enlarge it. Note the housing and communal use of the stream)

They would all benefit

The school's daily supply of water

We shall be arranging an orientation day. This would be from around 10.00am to 4.0pm with a break for lunch. Anyone wishing to come on the trip should make every effort to attend this. To express an interest please contact me, Ted, on tswindaleuk@yahoo.co.uk

I asked Linden what her hope for the visit would be. She replied, "My hope is always that the team will fall in love with the people they meet and teach and that they will want to commit to going back there several times (by which time the community should be flying and able to carry on the work). It is about building relationships, so getting stuck into one area is good. If people never go on another trip they are changed for life and often they become ardent prayer warriors and sometimes amazing fundraisers."