To continue from my previous blog information, I will tell you now about Naimutie Koya (given the name Elizabeth by her teachers). When she completed her four years at Nursing school in Nairobi, Kenya, she was designated a Community Nurse. On graduation she wanted to help her own community, but there was no clinic anywhere near where she and Tirian lived. So, she decided she would have to work far away at clinic and essentially live away from her husband and community. When we heard that there was no local clinic, the Foundation decided to build a much needed clinic in the community where the Koyas live, called Endoinyo Erinka.
The clinic has a women's wing and a men's wing, and a maternity area, as well as a pharmacy, meeting room etc. And, just this year., the Foundation built an addition. We did not anticipate that the Foundation would need to pay for the medical staff and cleaners etc. However, the people using the clinic have very little ability to pay, so for many years our Foundation has provided funding for the clinic staff salary. There was another need that arose as the clinic on average has 16 births a month and the need was for an incubator. So the Foundation purchased an incubator and put in solar panels to run it. Problem was that when the sun wasn’t shining, there was no electricity, so we had to buy a quite expensive battery to hold all the power generated by the solar panels.
The name of the clinic is the Naishorua Medical Clinic and it is much used and has exceedingly competent staff. The clinic has outside toilets, and had to comply with government stipulations regarding sewers and sanitary things not normally available in these remote areas. The government provided nothing for the clinic but were happy to take fees and taxes before it was even up and running. When there is an emergency at the clinic that requires hospitalization our Foundation has provided vehicles that can take patients the 2-3 hour drive to the nearest full sized hospital for care.
In addition to this kind of normal clinic work, Naimutie is also trying to teach the ladies the importance of pre-natal care and coming to the clinic for all deliveries. It’s hard to break through their pre conceived ideas that having a baby at home is fine. There was just the first death at the clinic – a mother who chose to stay home too long before coming to the clinic, a long way away, and had complications with childbirth that caused her death.
The clinic will continue to grow as the population grows and the larger than normal doctor housing that we also had to build....
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