Friends of Londiani’s Health project began today when 16 members of the health team arrived in Nairobi. This team will be joined by another 16 members next weekend. 32 volunteers from Ireland, Scotland and Australia will travel to the Kipkelion District to work together with local communities in completing health projects. The tasks that the volunteers will work on include Health Surveys, Water Projects, Lifeskills Peer Education Courses, Committee Trainings, Medical Education Courses, Public Health Field Days, Outreach clinics in the community, Bee Keeping, and Business Planning. This project also includes the “link team” from Mayo General Hospital who will come for 1 week during the project. Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Londiani District Hospital in February this year, and this will be the first meeting of the two committees involved to decide on partnership projects. FOL will facilitate the link between the two hospitals. The team will be based in the Kipkelion District in 2 areas – Molo, where the medical education courses on Emergency Obstetric Care (EOC) and Trauma and Childhood Illness will be run for staff from each of the 51 health facilities in the District. The Irish teaching faculty will work with the Kenyan teaching faculty in delivering the course. The second team will be based in Kamasian which is a village near Ndubusat that FOL is beginning to work with.Other team members will spend some time in Londiani where the business planning, bee keeping and committee trainings will take place. It is also the time of year when the education bursary students supported by FOL are interviewed, and so some of the volunteers will be involved with this. The Project Leaders are Laura Ahern, Pat Broderick and Mary Dunford who are all very experienced volunteers with FOL. We would like to take this opportunity to wish them and all the members of the team the very best of luck. We hope you will enjoy the experience and thank you for working in partnership with communities in Kenya and with the Ministry of Health in Kipkelion District.
