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HEALTH FOR ALL IN LIMA

Salute e Sviluppo has a clear mission: to improve the living conditions of every individual, especially the most vulnerable (children and women), by promoting fair and sustainable development processes in access to health and education services, social and economic empowerment.

To carry it forward, there are many projects that we inaugurate each year with prestigious partners and donors, but there are also many initiatives that Health and Development pursues on its own, funding support activities for those in need who ask for help.

A few months ago, the Asociación corazones & Manos Solidarias San Francisco, which has long been working on Peruvian soil to improve the health conditions of the young patients of the San Bartolomé and Cayetano Heredia hospitals in Lima, proposed to us to contribute to the ‘Health for All: Diazossido Project’.

Edrick and Samuel are two very young children (1 year old and 4 years old respectively) suffering from congenital hyperinsulinism (HC), a very rare endocrine disease that develops in the first months of life and can lead to severe health impairment in young patients, causing severe neurological problems, in some cases irreversible.

This disease in Peru is particularly compromising due to delays in diagnosis and administration of the right medication – the Diazoxide – which is not marketed in the country and which is prohibitively expensive, both for the hospitals themselves and for the poorest families, who do not have the possibility of importing it from abroad. The administration of the drug, in most cases, has to be long-lasting in order to ensure the children’s recovery, which makes it even more difficult to maintain a sufficient supply.

To make up for this serious shortage, the Asociación corazones & Manos Solidarias San Francisco has for years been searching for public and private donors who can contribute to the purchase and shipment of the life-saving drug. Salute e Sviluppo decided to respond affirmatively to this request and purchase the Diazoxide needed for the current and future care of little Edrick, Samuel and many other children who will need it in the next two years.

We at Salute e Sviluppo are very happy to be able to intervene in the first person, helping those in need, and in this case we hope that – also thanks to our contribution – the little patients in the hospitals of Lima suffering from this disease and their families can finally find hope again.

 

FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF JUVENANT SAINT CAMILLE

The Juvenat Saint Camille is a school in Ouagadougou, run by the Camillians, which welcomes many children from the surrounding areas, offering them a proper education and a serene environment in which to cultivate their studies and interests.

The education centre needs to proceed with further modernisation to enable the facility to provide more and more services to the students. In particular, the need for a well and a pumping system to provide enough drinking water for the needs of the students and the school was emphasised; and it seemed essential to proceed with the installation of a computer room.

Faced with these needs, Salute e Sviluppo was delighted to be able to contribute to the improvement of the centre, initiating this project which aims to both provide water and equip the hall.

Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso and, although it is the country’s best-supplied city, it suffers from the general situation of the nation which, in addition to extreme poverty, in recent years has also had to deal with terrorists who attack the country in waves with attacks and violent acts. It seems essential to help the population with agri-food, health or – as in this case – educational development projects.

As of 1 November 2022, we decided to start work on the improvement of the school centre: work on the construction of the well and pumping system was swift and went smoothly. Already now the system is functioning and gives the school access to an adequate supply of drinking water.

As far as the computer room is concerned, the project includes the purchase of 24 computers and the fitting out of the entire room, which will give the children the opportunity to study computer science – an absolutely necessary subject – do more in-depth research on school topics, connect to the net and expand their knowledge in this way. The room would also be used for presentations, small conferences and other learning situations for the children.

P. Felice de Miranda, President of Salute e Sviluppo, had the opportunity a short while ago, during his last mission to Burkina Faso, to visit the school and see how the work was progressing: he found many happy children waiting for him, who were grateful to Health and Development for the ongoing project.

Activities will end in June 2023, by which time the computer room should be completed and properly equipped. We will keep you updated on all the milestones we achieve!

SNEHAGRAM: THE INDEPENDENT LIFE OF YOUNG HIV-POSITIVE PEOPLE

The project “Towards the future of young people at Snehagram Centre Transition Programme for Independent Living’.thanks to the contribution of the Catholic Church, which earmarks part of the eight per thousand of the total IRPEF revenue for charitable interventions in favour of the Third World. We had already told you about this project that has kept us busy in India since 1 September 2018, aided by the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) and in collaboration with the Sneha Charitable Trust (SCT) association, to complete the education and training of no less than 70 HIV-positive girls and boys.

In India, HIV status still represents a stigma for society: all those with HIV/AIDS are shunned and placed on the margins of a society that still struggles to accept them. Most HIV-positive young people have often been orphaned by the very disease that afflicts them. In such cases, it is crucial to accommodate them in facilities that give them the possibility of not being alone and of building a decent future for themselves. The programme promoted by the association Sneha Charitable Trust is divided into several pathways, each of which is tailored to a specific age group: from a very young age, children are taken in, living in the community, having access to all necessary medical care and growing up in an educational and stimulating environment.

Snehagram is the last phase of the project and involves accompanying 18-24 year olds towards independent/semi-independent living. In order to achieve the goal, the initiative provides a housing solution for each of the young people and vocational paths suitable for enhancing their skills and entering the world of work.

For this reason, four ‘cluster houses’ were built. In each house lives a group of five or six young people, whose members have been trained to do different jobs according to their abilities, specifically: some are engaged in animal husbandry, others in agriculture, mechanics, plumbing, IT, photography, videography and tailoring. All training courses were chosen by the students according to their own inclinations, helped by a tutor.

After an initial phase in which the young people were able to train and decide for themselves the discipline in which they wanted to specialise, the project started a second phase in which all of them were able to carry out their chosen task in a professional manner and start earning an income.

Four barns were built and 25 cows and two bulls were purchased, as well as two milking machines to facilitate the work. The milk produced was sold to neighbouring dairies and all income went to the project boys.

It was poultry breeding also increased with excellent results: 10 batches of chickens were produced and sold on each of the four farms, the resulting profit went to the young people participating in the project who, already starting to receive an income, can gradually become more and more independent.

In the agricultural area, a total of four greenhouses and a pond were built to collect rainwater, which is used for irrigating the land. To improve this aspect, a reservoir and other facilities for storing open water were also provided, and a well was dug. Hydroponic cultivation was also started, with the purchase of materials for drip irrigation, specific tools, saplings for planting and fertile fertiliser.

Other boys dedicated themselves to making paper bags from old newspapers, which were then sold to neighbouring medicine shops. Each boy came to produce an average of 500 envelopes or 100 paper bags.

Finally, all those trained in mechanical, electronic and hydraulic systems were placed in various production and assembly companies in the area. Their housing also tries to respond as best as possible to the need to be close to the workplace, being located not near greenhouses and farms, but close to industrial areas.

The project has been very successful and now, at the end, the impact it has had on the lives of every single boy in Snehagram is tangible. They have been successfully launched into independent living: each of them has already started earning an income, being able to live in a house that is adequate for their health needs, and also close to their working environment.

The project should have been finished earlier, but the Covid- 19 pandemic slowed down the work. India was hit hard and even the Snehagram centre was not spared, most of its occupants fell ill and planned activities did not continue as planned. At the end of the pandemic emergency there were no further hiccups and the project continued as planned.

We are happy to have been able to help the young people of Snehagram who, in the absence of the centre founded by the Sneha Charitable Trust, would have been forced into a life on the margins of society, with no chance of employment.

HEALTH AND NUTRITION IN BOSSEMPTÉLÉ

“Health and Nutrition for the Vulnerable Population of the Sub-Prefecture of Bossemptélé’ has been a project that we have told you about many times, recounting all the milestones that we have gradually achieved. The project, part of the ‘Emergency Initiative to Support the Vulnerable Population in the Central African Republic’, was funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and started in September 2021.

The interventions were concentrated in Bossemptélé, the town where the John Paul II Hospital – the health hub of the entire region – is located, and in the surrounding 75 km. We are in the Central African Republic, an endemically poor country, where many of the basic services are the preserve of a few, while the majority of the population suffers from precarious and insecure conditions, both health and food. For some years now, moreover, rebel groups have been making the country even more unstable, carrying out violent acts and frightening the already hard-pressed population.

Anche noi di Salute e Sviluppo – nel corso di questo progetto – abbiamo dovuto affrontare questa situazione, che ha rallentato i lavori, rendendoli più difficili e pericolosi. Despite this, we were able to achieve most of the goals we had set ourselves, including the construction of an emergency room for the John Paul II Hospital. Before our intervention, the hospital did not have the possibility to accommodate the most serious patients in a suitable room, now the emergency room has been completed, both in terms of structural construction and equipment. During this year in which construction work proceeded, the hospital was nevertheless able to see more than 9,000 patients, of whom about one third were admitted to receive the right treatment.

Another deficiency we had identified at an early stage concerned the hospital’s ability to guarantee the necessary meals for in-patients: most of those arriving at the facility have a severe state of malnutrition and need to re-establish a proper diet. In the course of this project, we built a kitchen adjacent to the hospital premises, which can offer three meals a day to all patients. Despite the fact that the structural work has only just been completed, a temporary kitchen has been set up since the start of the project, which has managed to provide three full meals a day for more than 1600 patients.

In order to increase the capacity of the John Paul II Hospital to adequately meet the local population’s demand for care, we decided to start a training programme for health personnel. Thanks to this initiative, 38 workers specialised in obstetrics, ophthalmology, laboratory techniques and maintenance of medical equipment were trained.

In order to provide widespread access to care also in the rural areas surrounding Bossemptélé, we rehabilitated, and in some cases built from scratch, the postes de santé located in some villages within the sub-prefecture. Before our arrival, these facilities were unsafe, with severe structural problems and without any furniture or machinery useful for first aid. During the year, we renovated, furnished and equipped the poste de santé of Gbawi (40 km from Bossemptélé), Bodangui, (10 km), and Bombalou (45 km) with sanitary materials, and we built a new poste de santé in the village of Yangoro, 15 km from Bossemptélé. In addition, we have trained more than 30 workers who will ensure an efficient health service by manning these postes de santé. In addition to each of these facilities, a well was also rehabilitated or constructed to provide drinking water, not only to the poste de santé, but also to the entire population of the corresponding village. Thanks to some budget balances, we were able to rehabilitate an additional well in the village of Boyaram. In total, more than 21,000 inhabitants have access to drinking water.

In addition to these villages, there are many others that, not having a poste de santé and being far from Bossemptélé, remain uncovered in terms of health. To solve this problem, we activated and strengthened the mobile clinic service, which – during the course of the project – was able to visit more than 27 villages, providing first aid to the local population. The mobile clinic also started awareness-raising meetings focusing on different health topics, and managed to involve more than a thousand people. In recent months, the climate of instability in the country has worsened: armed rebel groups have targeted large areas, including part of the area where the mobile clinic operates, some of which have been forced to flee. Due to this situation, it was not possible to visit many villages and proceed with all the previously planned activities.

Despite these difficulties, which caused several slowdowns, the project recorded positive results: 14% more of the local population had access to health services, 25% more had access to drinking waterwhile malnutrition dropped from 40 to 38 per cent. The facilities we have built and the activities we have initiated will continue to be a valuable aid for the locals, who will finally have access to adequate health services of a higher standard.

This article was produced within the framework of the project Health and Nutrition for the Vulnerable Population of the Subprefecture of Bossemptélé AID 05/RCA/12049/2021 funded by the Italian Development Cooperation Agency. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Italian Development Cooperation Agency. The Italian Development Cooperation Agency is not responsible for information that is considered erroneous, incomplete, inadequate, defamatory or in any way reprehensible.

IN BURKINA FASO WITH A GOAL: CULTIVATING VALUE

The New Year has just started and we at Health and Development are already on the road! The mission that saw us in Burkina Faso to plan the activities of the new project ‘Cultivating Value: good practices and innovative methods for inclusive and sustainable agro-livestock production’, financed by the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development (AICS), ended a few days ago.
This new initiative was inaugurated at the beginning of the year and for 36 months we will be committed to strengthening the structures and production activities that we had started in 2017 thanks to the support of the Italian Cooperation – MAECI, within the project ‘Innovative rice production and valorisation of local products for food sovereignty and sustainable rural development in the Bagré area, Burkina Faso’.

We are again in Bagré, a rural area in the central eastern part of Burkina Faso, which – due to its extreme poverty – has been the focus of several of our interventions for many years. In this region, the population, already exhausted by precarious living conditions, must also deal with the fear and violence brought to the country by Islamic terrorism, which aims to make the country’s already fragile balance even more unstable.

Terrorism, which has escalated in recent years, also makes it complex to carry out cooperation projects in large areas of the country, which are considered unsafe. We at Health and Development also came up against this sad reality, having to coordinate the project from the capital Ouagadougou, instead of directly from the intervention site. Without allowing ourselves to be discouraged by this, we nevertheless decided to take on this new challenge, which has the sustainable development of the Burkinabe primary sector as its primary objective.
The key word is diversification: during these 36 months, we aim to make agricultural and livestock production in the area as varied as possible, thus guaranteeing the local population not only enough food, but a varied diet and salvation from malnutrition.

At the same time, the project will bring other benefits: thanks to the strengthening of existing farms and agrarian supply chains, more jobs will be secured for locals who, by becoming part of this production system, will be able to increase the economic capacity of the community’s families. A real improvement in conditions will hopefully help curb the desire to emigrate, considering the absorption of many locals into the new jobs that will be created.

Strengthening the primary sector is of paramount importance to achieve the project goals as agriculture and animal husbandry are still conducted using traditional methods. An important aspect of the initiative is the promotion of women’s empowerment through the transfer of knowledge to local women who will thus have the opportunity to improve family food production based on horticulture and forest products.

The project appears ambitious in terms of its objectives and at the same time difficult due to the unstable and dangerous condition of the area. Fortunately, there are many partners actively participating in the project, bringing added value: the NGO Santé et Promotion Humaine (SAPHE), which has been collaborating for many years with Health and Development for the agricultural and livestock development of the country, managing the production chains created with the previous project with local personnel; the Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Forestry Sciences and Technologies (DAGRI) of the University of Florence, which specialises in food production and environmental protection and recovery in tropical and sub-tropical countries, thanks to many research and cooperation activities; the NGO AES-CCC, which has been rooted in the Burkinabé territory for many years with programmes to combat malnutrition and food security, with a specific focus on empowering women at both the local and institutional level.

In addition, several local stakeholders are joining the cause by helping us in this new challenge: Bagrépole, the Women’s Associations of the Region and the Government Departments at municipal level in the area, all of which are rooted in the territory with the ability to act in a timely manner in solving any problems.

Despite the endemic difficulties of the area, the Health and Development project is designed to be lasting, sustainable and rooted in the territory: the fundamental objective is to bring about a positive change in Burkinabé productive capacity, which will prove to be so at the end of the 36 months, enabling the local population to improve their living conditions in the long term.

We are only at the beginning of this new adventure, an ambitious challenge that we hope to win, thanks to the funding from AICS and the valuable cooperation of partners. We will always keep you updated on the small and big milestones we achieve!

CURES AND TEACHINGS IN THE OHUAM PENDÉ

The site of most of the projects we have underway is the Ouham – Pendé region: about 400 kilometres from the capital Bangui, it is one of the poorest areas of the already destitute Central African Republic. The political instability of the entire nation, and the resulting violence, makes poverty endemic and basic rights inaccessible.

Our point of reference in the region is the John Paul II Camillian Hospital in Bossemptélé, which has been working with courage and determination for more than 20 years, representing a landmark for the population who can count on adequate care thanks to this hospital.

The SENÌ- Health and Hygienic Concepts for the Bossemptélé Community project, funded by FONDATION ASSISTANCE INTERNATIONALE (FAI), started on 1 January 2021 with the aim of building the necessary infrastructure for the hospital, supplying medicines and sanitary consumables, recruiting health personnel and promoting hygiene and health education for the local population.

Specifically, as far as infrastructure is concerned, the project aims to contribute to the improvement of the hospital by building a new well that can meet the hospital’s entire water needs and by installing new photovoltaic panels that can guarantee a stable supply of electricity. The well has been completed, is functional and can fully fulfil its function. The panels have all been installed and made operational.

The infrastructural result has been achieved, while the result focused on raising the awareness of the local population on health and prevention issues is ongoing with excellent results. The project includes a series of weekly meetings on specific topics such as nutrition, vitamins, tobacco, alcohol, personal hygiene, malaria vaccination and environmental hygiene. Meetings have already started and continue to take place regularly, both within the hospital and in the surrounding rural areas thanks to the mobile clinic team. To date, more than 4000 people have been involved in awareness-raising activities.

Although the end of the project is set for next summer, the many local actors involved – the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Higher Education, Association pour les Œuvres Médicales des Eglises en Centrafrique – ASSOMESCA and the Order of the Carmelite Sisters of Bossemptélé, as well as the Camillian delegation in the Central African Republic that runs the John Paul II Hospital in Bossemptélé – will continue to work to ensure that the mission of raising awareness among the local population is ongoing and can produce long-term benefits.
We will keep you updated on the progress of the project and the many good stories coming from the John Paul II Hospital in Bossemptélé.

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