What's Up Doc? Actually, They Don't Have Doctors Around Here ....

 
Imagine a place where there are no doctors within 50 miles.  And no medicine, and no emergency services.  And no options available to employ against easily preventable diseases. Or basic care to enable babies to be born to healthy mothers and thrive. We have just described rural Senegal in West Africa.


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In the last few days, we’ve taken a look at how to help those without resources begin to improve their lives. This is the mission of The Andando Foundation. With a few relatively simple solutions, you can put people on the path to healthy lives (and prosperity?).


Initially, it was all about getting water to those who need it. The Andando logo is comprised of ladies carrying water on their head. This strenuous task took as much as two hours a day, to go fetch water from a far away source and carry it all the way back to your house.


That led to the process of where we looked to help them grow food and dramatically improve their nutrition - along with all the benefits that come with it. It might be over simplified to say, but in this sunny land, all you need is water and good seeds and otherwise fundamental instruction to succeed.


Then we looked at how to help them learn and teach their children. If you can feed them at school, you ensure their attendance and enhance the learning environment, and then you can provide them with low cost and efficient classroom facilities.


These are important first steps. There is another big factor in quality of life that is in short supply in much of Africa - proper medical care.


Once you start to meet basic needs, you can proceed up the ladder to something a bit more sophisticated. Health care is often a challenge - look at the hurdles and high cost in our own country of America. But just getting started is a big step, and there are feasible things that can be done, often at low cost. 

 

For example, in these remote villages, you need a facility to offer clean, hygienic care, and keep medicine secure, and put this in easy walking distance for the local citizens. If the best place (or only place) to birth a baby is a five hour donkey cart ride, then you are going to have problems.


For a few years now, through Andando, we have built what are called Health Posts in far off villages in the bush. A better description for an outside audience would be Health Clinic. Again, for a small fraction of what a medical facilty would cost in the “modern” world, you can offer life saving medical care.


The best way to treat a disease if prevent it from ever starting. With proper pre-natal care for expecting mothers, and proper care for babies once they are born, you can solve a whole lot of problems before they happen.


And running water and proper sanitary facilities makes a huge difference. You need to teach people that proper health means keeping clean and washing your hands and avoiding contact with germs.

And even having simple medicines on hand can eradicate persistent problems like diarrhea, or rural parasites and other nagging problems. So much of medical care means educating people of what causes illness and how to treat it, or better yet, prevent it.


But you have to get a facility established. One of the challenges is getting qualified staff a place to practice medicine. Once a Health Clinic is built, the government and local authorities are much more like to provide a proper nurse or medical professional. And medicine, drugs, and even proper things like bandages follow.


We have made solid strides to get health facilities in place. There is a lot more to do. 

One of our own crew, demonstrating the weight scale ...

 

A positive success story:

These local folks are rather fertile, and there are a lot of babies born around here. But there have always been problems and challenges. Now those problems can be addressed. 

Since we have gained a lot of ground (pardon the pun) with our gardens, nutrition and food security has sky rocketed. People are eating much more healthy organic food. The result of this has seen an increase in twin babies being born. In fact, there has been a noticeable “boom” in twins!


In the past, underweight babies have struggled to survive.  But now, the babies are born to healthy mothers and are maintaining good weight gain.  We know this because we measure their weight, (picture above) and they are thriving, even as they come two at a time!