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Writer's picturePaula Hammack

MEDICINES AND UNIVERSITIES

Updated: Sep 8, 2020

Over the years the Foundation has helped many people negotiate through the difficulty of getting medical care when it is vital and of getting into university.  It is always the costs that prohibit people getting a further education as there are just about no free programs of any kind for either medicine or schools and universities.  Therefore, our central focus is to assist the disadvantaged communities have access to medical care and education. I would like to give you some examples of the people we have helped in the past. One of the first people we provided medical care to was an 11 years old boy in Zimbabwe who had a very major medical problem and there was no money in his family to basically save his life. The father had about $6,000 in savings when more like $20,000 was needed.  We provided those funds and the young man, now in his late teens was able to recover and continue with his life.  The next one was a young man I personally am close to as he has been my guide on many many occasions in South Africa.  Sadly, but something we know all too well in this country – his father's farm used Round Up weed killer to control the weeds on the farm and this young man was the one whose job it was to spray those weeds. Well, like so many people in the US today, he came down with non Hodgkins Lymphoma as a result of the pesticides used in Round Up Weed Killer.  This disease can deadly without treatment.  We, together with a few other kind people, were able to contribute $25,000 to his medical care and now, 7 years later, he is living a normal life although at the same time, worrying about a recurrence of this cancer and being regularly checked.



We have provided funding and support over the years for less serious medical conditions for other people, and at this time we also pay for all medical staff at the clinic we built. The people who frequent the clinic simply do not have money for medical care, so until we get an apartment building full of tenants whose rent will pay the clinic staff salaries, we are funding it.  One of the challenges with the clinic comes with the women who are going to give birth. We have on average 16 births at month at the Naishorua Medical Clinic (which we built, along with the doctor housing) and the issue is that a lot of women who have had perhaps 2 or 3 children and are now due to give birth again, do not come to the clinic as they feel that there is no need to since their earlier at home births went well.  Our community nurse is trying to educate women that they need to attend the clinic for all births because there is no rule that if the first 2 or 3 were OK the next one will be.   We just, very sadly, had our first death at the clinic and it was similarly a young woman who had given birth before, attempted to do so at home and complications set in and by the time she got to the clinic it was too late.  



In addition to what we do at the clinic,  we paid for Basani Ngobeni in S. Africa to get a four year University degree and she did really well and graduated with distinctions and honors,  and she was employed until Covid hit and now has no job due to Covid, but we are hopeful that she will get work when covid is defeated.  We paid for a young woman in Zambia to go through nursing school which she did and completed a year ago.  She is still looking for work as in Zambia the government has to assign nurses and they’ve not yet called on her

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In Nairobi we are sponsoring another young women through 4 years of University.  It is her aim to have a business or occupation where she  helps young women such as herself to understand they they do not have to be forced into marriages with men they don’t want to marry. And also that they don’t have to accept FGM as a way of life, they can say no. We are very proud that we have been able to sponsor these young women through schooling and to a better life.



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