Looking back at 2012

It has been nearly a year since I posted something here. This does not mean that there has been nothing going on. The picture has been changing all the time and often too fast moving to record here.
That includes events in our church in Derby as well as in Freetown.

Visits that did not take place!
 We had hoped to welcome both Pastor Samuel Kargbo and his brother, Alpha, to England at different times in the year. This would have allowed us to review where we are at and give them an idea of the current vision of our church.

                                Samuel Kargbo, Pastor of Faith Baptist Church, Wellington

Samuel was due at the end of May, when he proposed to stop off for a few days on route to the United States to be awarded a doctorate. Unfortunately he was refused an entry visa on the grounds that he had failed to show that he had enough money to support himself in the UK. This is in spite of our invitation latter stating that we would be responsible for his accommodation, meals and transport.

Alpha Kargbo,  Head Teacher and Development Co-ordinator

Alpha was due to come in a party of 27 teachers to visit their twinned schools in Hull. He had problems with a passport apparently and when I wrote to the school in Hull I received the reply,

"I'm sorry to say that Alpha will not be coming to England in the near future as he missed his flight. We were told that he was collecting his passport on the 19th and to book a flight for Sunday 23rd which we did. Unfortunately, due to a breakdown in communication, we were not informed until the day of the flight that Alpha had not got his passport by which time it was too late to get a refund on the flight so the money was lost." 

I don't know the details of this, but the upshot has been that the Greenway Primary School has linked with a different school in Freetown, which has been distressing for Alpha. I hope he has learnt something from it.


No trip from Derby to Freetown in 2012.

The primary focus of this trip would have been follow up to the healthcare teaching and the micro-enterprise. We had considered going at Easter, but the normal pattern of church services would have left little time for our teaching programme.

a)  Healthcare
After our visit in 2011 we were concerned that the people who came to the community health care teaching were, in the main, not prepared to take the knowledge they gained into the community unless they were paid to do so. That was not an option. Our teachers also saw that the professional medical staff who were there, clinic nurses etc., were knowledgeable and probably as capable of teaching the community as we are. I asked Samuel and the team in Freetown whether there is much point in continuing as we have been? Might it be taught better to teach primary health care through the school, or the scouts? Do we say we have done our bit and leave it as it is, or does it need more time?

b)  Micro-enterprise
This appeared to be doing well. Some new clients had just been taken on and “reports of the new clients will be sent once we are through with the verification process. We did not gave them the money before Christmas for fear that they would have used it for dress and food and done nothing with the intended purpose.

A client who was able to increase her selection of herbs and spices to attract more customers  and thereby support her family.

The old clients are doing fine with their repayment and there are no defaulters."

There was nothing that seemed to need our immediate help and it has been a good time to take a step back and see how we can best serve the communities of Looking Town, Kissy and Wellington in the future. We hope to be back before too long!

Openings for Child Health workers in Freetown

Child health is one of the world's most pressing development challenges.  The Welbodi Partnership supports the provision of paediatric care in Sierra Leone, where child health statistics are the worst in the world.

Welbodi is the Krio word for Health


 The Welbodi Partnership team met in Sierra Leone, and have been working with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the Ola During Children's Hospital since June 2007. The team consists of a core in-country team, and a range of partners and advisors who support their work. On our visit last year we were shown around the Children's Hospital by Dr. Fred Martineau, the Project Manager.
 

Dr. Fred Martineau speaking to our group.

 His contract is coming to an end and the search is on for a replacement from Sierra Leoneans at home or in the diaspora.
 
As this blog has readers in many parts of the world, I am including the details for this post as well as for volunteer Consultant Paediatricians.
 

Ola During Children's Hospital in the top photo.



The Partnership's vision is to tackle child mortality in Sierra Leone by improving the quality of paediatric care. Fuller details of their work may be found at http://www.welbodipartnership.org/


Paid and Volunteer Positions with the Welbodi Partnership


They currently have two exciting openings in Freetown: a paid Project Officer, open to Sierra Leoneans at home or in the diaspora; and volunteer Consultant Paediatricians, who will work in Freetown for a minimum of three months. Please read on for full details, and please share these postings widely.

Project Officer
This is an excellent opportunity for someone who is passionate about improving child healthcare in Sierra Leone. The position offers the opportunity to build skills and work towards assuming primary project management and monitoring and evaluation responsibilities.

Location: Ola During Children’s Hospital, Fourah Bay Road, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Assignment Length: one year, with possibility to extend

Salary and Benefits: annual gross salary of up to US$9,000 depending on qualifications and experience

Application Deadline: 5pm, Friday 3rd February 2012.

The Welbodi Partnership will not accept CVs and cover letters for this position. Please complete an APPLICATION FORM, otherwise your application will not be considered. The application form can be collected from the Welbodi office at Ola During Children’s Hospital during weekday office hours (8.30am-4.30pm), or email jobs@welbodipartnership.org to request an application form.

Crowd of Mothers and children waiting outside the Ola During Children's Hospital on the first day of free health care in April 2010

Volunteer Consultant Paediatricians
As a Consultant Paediatrician with Welbodi Partnership, you would have a direct and significant impact on the quality of care provided to extremely disadvantaged children. You would play a key role in the development of Sierra Leone’s undergraduate and postgraduate paediatric training programmes, producing the country’s future leaders in child health.

Location: Ola During Children’s Hospital, Fourah Bay Road, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Assignment Length: Minimum of 3 months

Salary and Benefits: Position is voluntary, but we will cover the cost of a return flight, medical registration and visa application, and will provide accommodation and transport in Freetown.

Application Deadline: ASAP - Applications will be considered on a rolling basis

Interested candidates should email a CV and cover letter to Suzanne Thomas at suzanne@welbodipartnership.org

More details of these posts can be found at http://www.welbodipartnership.blogspot.com/



A welcome Christmas Gift

Glad to be able to bank a cheque for £810 a couple of days ago. £745 of this was an unexpected gift from the Greenway Primary School in Hull who are twinned with our New Era School in Kissy, Freetown. They raised the amount through events on Children in Need Day and also in the lead up to Christmas. It is a school with around 468 pupils and they must have worked hard with the staff to produce such an amazing amount.

The Beverley Male Voice Choir Christmas Concert 2009

The further £65 was a donation from the Beverley Male Voice Choir. We thank them, together with the school for the giving of their time and effort in this cause.

Alpha with Mrs. Liz Wilson



The Head Teacher at the Greenway Primary School, Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson, has visited Freetown and met Alpha Kargbo, who is Head at the New Era School. She appreciates the problems that the staff and pupils in Sierra Leone have to contend with.

Head Teacher Alpha Kargbo in his office

The gift, along with a donation from the United States, has ensured that the school enters the new year free from any debt and with the teachers in a good position to offer free education to the needy children in the area. This has been an answer to prayer. Thank you to all who have contributed to this.

New Era School - Freetown

Africa Mercy leaves Sierra Leone

The Africa Mercy has now completed a 10 month field service in the Sierra Leone where around 1000 volunteers from 40 nations have provided free medical care and humanitarian aid to thousands of the country’s poorest people. They are about 400 volunteers onboard at any one time.

Volunteers waving goodbye to Freetown

The charity reports that since February, the volunteer medical teams have performed more than 2,700 free surgeries such as tumour removal, cleft lip and palate correction, cataract removal, orthopaedics and skin grafts for burns victims. Volunteer dental teams have also carried out more than 28,700 dental procedures, providing essential dental care in a country that has only one dentist for every 1million people.

Leone is one of the world’s least developed countries and healthcare in Sierra Leone is largely unavailable for the poor with the majority of the population living on less than £1.20 per day.

As I mentioned earlier in this blog, HRH The Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence witnessed first-hand the work of Mercy Ships during their trip to Sierra Leone in October.



Judy Polkinhorn, Executive Director of Mercy Ships UK, said, “This was Mercy Ships’ seventh visit to Sierra Leone and the team this year has worked extensively with the Ministry of Health and local hospitals to focus on capacity building and the training of local doctors, anaesthetists, nurses and other health professionals.

The country is still recovering from its 11 year civil war and its people are still in need of hope and healing - which I am proud to say we have been able to provide.”

In 2012 the Africa Mercy will be based first in Togo, then in Guinea.



Mercy Ships. Teaching about malaria. Would you volunteer?

As mentioned in a previous post, on 25th October Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, accompanied by her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, visited the world’s largest charity hospital ship in Sierra Leone as part of her tour of the country.  The 16,000 tonne Africa Mercy is in its eighth month of a 10-month field service in Sierra Leone, a country the charity has visited seven times over the last 19 years providing free medical care and humanitarian aid.  

Since February, Mercy Ships volunteer medical teams in Sierra Leone have performed more than 2,700 surgeries and 28,700 dental procedures and worked extensively with the Ministry of Health and local hospitals to focus on capacity building and the training of local doctors, anaesthetists, nurses and other health professionals.

5 year old Emmanuel who had surgery for a cleft lip.



I noticed this video because the teaching they are doing on malaria is very similar to the way we do it and it emphasises the importance of mosquito nets (with a small boy acting as the insect!). The government has begun to distribute nets for free and many of the community we serve have them. The teaching is important because people do not always use them correctly. Some wrap the net around them, which allows the insects to reach their skin. Some have used the nets for fishing!

Much of the video invites people to volunteer to work with Mercy Ships. This blog is read in many countries and some of my readers may want to do this.  The volunteer crew pay their own airfare and crew fees to cover the cost of their time on board.

Water Filters up and running!

It has taken some time to see the pictures of these filters in operation, but they have been up and running for a while. The school needed to buy some locally available plastic containers. Untreated water is poured in at the top and clean drinking water comes out of the tap. The children in the school are drinking safe and good tasting water in greater quantities which will prevent sickness and dehydration.

The system as it was before. Hard work and not very clean water!

But now -



Freetown Children's Hospital gets important visitors

When we visited earlier in the year we were very pleased to be welcomed as a team to the Children's Hospital in Freetown. But the important visitors I am writing about were not us! 

Since April 2010 when the free health initiative was introduced, the results have been amazing. It is reported that in the first month, antenatal clinics in Freetown saw seven times more women than they had before and 179 per cent more children visited health centres.


A hospital doctor, Dr David Baion, has said that since health care was free the number of children dying on the wards has actually halved. This was because people were presenting themselves quicker. They were coming to the hospital when still treatable. In our Community Healthcare teaching we were asked to emphasise the importance of taking children early for treatment.

We were welcomed and shown around by Dr. Fred Martineau, who works at the hospital as part of the Welbodi Partnership team.  Welbodi is the Krio word for Health and the Partnership, which has its base in England, supports the provision of paediatric care in Sierra Leone and helps the Ola During Children's Hospital deliver quality services to its patients.


They do this by working in collaboration with the hospital management and staff and with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to identify priorities and develop solutions. The work began in Sierra Leone in 2007.

Fred is a trainee paediatrician from the UK who is volunteering in Sierra Leone from 2010-2011. In addition to clinical work in multi-ethnic communities in Bristol and East London, he has worked with organisations supporting the health needs of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. He trained at Bristol University, has a BSc in International Health from UCL and a Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from Liverpool. He is a Member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

A home-made Triage sign in the entrance to the hospital. Triage  is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. In spite of the benefits of free health care, it is still impossible to treat everyone efficiently due to shortage of materials and of staff.

We were invited to give blood. There was not enough time for everyone to do so, and we were assured that the needles were sterile! Sarah and Sam volunteered.

And now the really important visitors. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal and her husband visited the hospital a couple of days ago and met some of the patients.   I understand her visit has been prompted by the 50th Anniversary of Independence for the country.

Unlike us, she has also managed to visit the Mercy Ship which is still anchored in Freetown.

Ali, a volunteer nurse on the ship, has said "When she did arrive, Princess Anne was lovely. She met the two patients we had picked out for her, and then just kept right on going around that side of the ward and met all the rest of them, too. I got trapped in a corner, and so when she got around to the lady in Bed Twelve, I was the one the princess turned to when she asked about the patient's surgery.

I got to talk to the princess, bright blue scrubs and all. I've done come crazy things here on this ship, but explaining oro-nasal fistula surgery to the daughter of the Queen of England? That's right up there with the rest of them."