The Community Healthcare Initiative

This is the road up to the Looking Town School where we were to have our first meeting with the leaders and influencers from local schools, churches and mosques, the community elders and healthcare professionals. Note the rubbish at the side of the road, a continual problem.

At the school we were welcomed by the children on our first day, Monday afternoon.

A Greeting from the children

The rest of the week the whole school was practicing at the Field where the Sports Day would be held on the Friday. The teaching and discussions on health lasted for three days after the first session.

After a brief introduction from Linden, charts were put up listing the various concerns of those present. They can be seen around the corner of the room in the photograph.

Linden addressing the delegates.

Participants were asked to put a dot in the section they wished to see discussed. Healthcare came top with 30 voting for it. In my group we started to discuss malaria, high blood pressure and anaemia. It was interesting to find that in a number of groups eating too many oranges was seen as a cause of malaria. Someone had presumeably caught malaria just after eating a lot of oranges, put 2 and 2 together and made 29. The word had spread.

High blood pressure was often seen as a result of stress, and poverty and the aftermath of the civil war had given many opportunities for stress to take over. Explaining to the imam of a local mosque how to overcome problems in his congregation using Christian principles was an unusual experience, and showed that in this area the two religions are able to work well together.

Anne-Marie Gunter handing out name labels in the group she lead with physcologist Richard Lansdall-Welfare and Ted Swindale

                              Dr. Margaret Lansdall-Welfare (R) and Grace Swindale lead a group

L to R, Susie Marshall, Ruth McArthur and Samuel Warwick with their group and below is a group photo.

This group, Action for Health, came up with a plan.

They all received a certificate for completing the course, and here their spokesman, Nabieu Sesay, is receiving his reward from Ted Swindale. He had made an excellent Presentation, and we look forward to seeing how the plan has progressed on our next visit.

The first presentation was by Alfred Fogbawa, who gave a confident report of the plans for the future that were decided by the group with Sarah Frost.