This morning as I sit alone at Gongueye's village health hut I cannot help but be angry: the village doctor's son, Mohammadu Issa, has died of malaria. With no medicine to properly treat him and no transportation to get him to a better equipped health facility, the doctor had to watch his own son die of malaria - an easily preventable disease.Unfortunately, this is a reality in a village like Gongueye. It is a village far from a paved reliable road and without access to the simplest prevention of malaria: treated bed nets. Every year in July, August and September, when the rains fall, malaria is a rampant killer of young children, women and elders. Each day is a battle as another child struggles with high fevers, cold sweats, headaches and diarrhea. Every day it seems there is another death, another life lost.
Can I live here for another year amidst the ravages of malaria and do nothing to help prevent its destruction? Can you, my family and friends, know that I am here and not help protect the lives of the women and children I am able to reach each and every day? This is our challenge: to give each woman coming in for a pre- or post-natal examination a treated bed net to help protect the life of her fetus, herself and her children. Nets For Niger is the first step in making a difference, a difference we can make together.
About Gongueye and the Health Hut
Gongueye is a rural village in southern Niger approximately 160 kilometers southeast of Niamey. It is in the Dosso region and part of the Bobeye district, 4 kilometers off the Margu/Gaya laterite (hard dirt) road, a 40 minute walk by foot. The 2,000 people who live in Gongueye rely mainly on annual millet, rice, beans and peanut harvests and cold season gardening as sources of income and food for the family. They live in small simple round mud brick huts with millet-stalk thatched roofs.
In 2001, the Nigerien government completed the construction of a health hut just a short walk outside of the village of Gongueye. It is the only working health hut for the 20 surrounding villages and and Fulani populations in a 15 kilometer radius. The health hut falls under the ordinance of the Falmey Health Clinic, 23 kilometers north up the laterite road.
Staff consists of one Head Nurse, Issa Maman, one village appointed assistant, Abdou Adamou, and me, Carrie Guilfoyle, a Peace Corps volunteer. The clinic provides basic health care, first aid, pre- and post-natal consultations, baby-weighing as well as access to medicine, vaccinations and a small maternity room. It has no running water, electricity or generator and therefore relies on the Falmey Health Clinic, the closest clinic, for monthly vaccinations. Availability of these vaccinations is rare, if not obsolete.
Nets for Niger's Mission
As a health education Peace Corps volunteer working daily for the past 27 months at Gongueye's health hut doing pre- and post-national examinations for women and weekly baby-weighing, I am able to reach a lot of women on a day-to-day basis. My goal, with your help, is to provide every woman coming in for a prenatal examination a treated bed net for her and her children to sleep under to prevent the contraction of malaria. With every bed net purchased I, Carrie Guilfoyle, will personally gi
ve it to a woman and discuss with her its use and how to protect herself and her family from malaria as an everyday practice. Each be net purchased will protect another life against malaria. Nets For Niger is a small way in which we can all make a difference.How to purchase Nets for Niger
The cost of each net is $10. You can make a donation by check or credit card. Thank you for your generosity.
Checks made payable to Nets For Niger can be mailed to:
Nets for Niger
c/o Guilfoyle
405 Bellevue Avenue #304
Oakland, CA 94610
Credit Card:
Nutrition education for mothers
Chatting with women of the village
Carrie in her hut
Villager returning from the fields
Family hut, Gongueye
2 comments:
Hello, I like this blog.
Sorry not write more, but my English is not good.
A hug from Portugal
It is with gratitude for your magnanimous commitment to the rule of law and good governance as well as to the sustainability of Mother Earth and the well-being of all its children - also in Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Republic of Niger in particular here - that i turn to you.
The ways in which 'Peace Corps' helps the needies, protects the environment, the fauna and flora, while promoting solidarity and harmonious development through the advocacy of rational and humane attitude/relationships with nature and natural resources, are truly an example to emulate.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is now clear, that the greatest threat to mankind and Earth itself comes from overpopulation, which is growing at an exponential rate - as underlined in a recent UN Study: Slower Population Growth To Help Environment, UN Study concluded (18 November 2009): http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j74yWpJ1atBwCsu78IVj2VOABDzg
The efforts to preserve the crucial balance between the needs of Human societies and the imperatives of the environment in your respective countries/states and in certain parts of Africa and the rest of our world are certainly commendable, but still more should be done. The current situation requires that and quite urgently.
Furthermore, the taboo hanging above the topic of human reproduction must be lifted in all countries.
We have to fully understand the crucial role played by overpopulation in the current, deplorable state of Earth global affairs and acknowledge that we, Humans, and the ways we go about life put too much stress on Earth - specially with the knowledge, that the petroleum age is reaching its logical end, as studies show here: http://www.energiekrise.de/ (ASPO = Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas; in German language)
Do please endorse us and most importantly, do strongly advocate a rational, democratic and scientific birth control, at home, in Niger and elsewhere abroad; add your influential voice to ours, help us promote a humane and just solution to this tragedy!
Our major petition calling for such a world wide birth control is to be found at our campaign site, here : http://www.futureofmankind.co.uk/Billy_Meier/Special:Petition
With gratitude for the Honour of your Service and sincere Respect,
Adam
www.thecircleforhumanity.net
The Netherlands.
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