Ministry to share smiles

Ministry to share smiles
12 March, 2009

Senegal (PSI) -- Bartimee Medical Center, a hospital created and managed by ministry partner Inter-Senegal Mission, has been elected to host a cleft lip surgery program for several children. Approximately 20-25 children will receive the operation.

In January, government health authorities elected Bartimee Medical Center (BMC) to host a cleft lip surgery program for children in the surrounding area. Funds were granted for patients needing these services but whose families have no money to pay for it. The cleft lip operation, including a minimum of two days hospitalization, costs US$300.

BMC has already begun screening candidates. Dr. Adamson, the head doctor at BMC, estimates that there are 40-50 potential candidates. The program will grant approximately half of the candidates with the surgery. The other children will be placed on a waiting list for another program or will be recommended to other hospitals in Dakar.

"We are both surprised and honored," said Willy, BMC's administrative assistant. "This will echo our testimony throughout the surrounding area."

BMC was chosen over two other hospitals because of the quality of care their hospital provides. Health authorities said that BMC is better equipped to handle these surgeries than the other hospitals in the area.


ISM has started a program called Operation Bartimaeus, a community development program integrating health care and education, micro-loans, literacy, and agriculture projects.

In 1999, a small medical center in a rented house was opened for patients in a poor section of a major city. Today the medical work has grown, and so has the need, especially in the villages where people have no access to medical care.

Please pray for the surgeons and quick healing for the children. Pray for BMC staff to demonstrate God's perfect love through their words and deeds. Pray that many parents and their children will be touched by God's love through this surgery.

Congo Initiative

learn more about the Congo Initiative from their website and archived newsletters....

Be sure to visit our website to learn much more about our people, mission and work. For decades, the D.R. Congo has witnessed horrendous exploitation, disease and conflict, but in the midst of it all, a place of hope is emerging in Beni, where a new generation of Congolese leaders is being raised up to transform the country in the name of Jesus Christ. Come and see the new thing that God is doing through the Congo Initiative!
link to archived newsletters

Grand Magal Touba

This event empties out towns and village as about one million converge on a small city that has no hotels and many restrictions.
Learn more about Touba here

Senegal Road Trip

I just returned from Senegal about two weeks ago.
On this trip, my main goal was to travel to about seven villages in seven days to help develop a reporting system that will better help the partnerships that have been formed between villages and north American partners.
My visit was full of information and many kilometers in a rental car. I was to visit these villages and spend some time with them, encouraging the faithful there,getting a small snapshot of life in the village and get updates on projects and such.
While I visited some villages for the first time, others I had been to before. It was good to meet new friends and build on past relationships.
The road we traveled on were,well should I say horse cart paths. They were winding and interesting. It always amazes me that these people know where to go. I mean there are no signs, no landmarks...just paths that wind through a sub Saharan landscape. Its like they have this built in gps navigation system. I mean all this terrain is similar, it's flat, scattered varieties of trees, that include the famous Boubob tree and very sandy. The days we traveled the furthest distance were on the warm side. In my estimation it was over 100 degrees. When I asked my translator how hot he thought it was, I got a typical Senegalese response, "it's hot". I have learned over the years that it really doesn't pay to ask them about these type of things. Like " How hot is it?" or "How many people are in this village?", because it's all relative. Its either hot or cold or there's many people or not so many people. For a westerner that takes some adjustment with our local weather forecast that predicts our every weather movement. Here its not important.

Traveling to villages in a rural Senegal setting has its moments. Our 'hertz rental car" had no AC and FM if you know what I mean.
You have to keep the windows up when traveling down these dusty roads or you become consumed with very fine dust. So its either the dust or the heat...You know that if you break down...you are going to be doing one of two things. Walking or hitching a ride on a horse cart. You are in the bush where automobile travel is not the norm.
Our car, by God's grace and mercy, never broke down and our travels were safe.

Food for Thought

These world statistics from the World Relief Corporation are only a glimpse at
the great challenge we face globally:

For nearly 2 out of 3 people in the world, hunger is a lifestyle.
Industrialized countries compose 20% of the world population but consume 80% of the food resources.
In the United States alone, $30-$50 billion a year is spent on diets and related expenditures to reduce calorie intake.
The imbalance in food distribution is the number one reason for hunger.
1.1 billion people lack access to clean water.
1 out of 4 people lacks access to basic health services.
It is estimated that $30-40 billion a year would provide all developing countries with water, education and basic health care. This is the same amount spent annually on golf.

WEST AFRICA: When there is no village doctor

Photo: Tugela Riddley/IRIN
One out of four doctors trained in Africa leave the continent in search of more pay and stability (file photo)


DAKAR, 4 February 2009 (IRIN) - An international financial recession threatens to worsen the “severe medical workforce crisis” faced by almost 60 African and Asian countries, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO). The fewer health workers there are, the less chance a woman has to survive childbirth and a child his or her infancy, according to WHO.

In the last such statistics recorded by WHO, the agency in 2006 estimated a shortage of more than four million health workers in Africa and Asia.

The WHO Global Health Workforce Alliance estimates that on average one in four doctors and one in 20 nurses trained in Africa leave the continent to work in wealthier countries for the experience, more pay and better living conditions.

But Mubashar Sheikh, executive director of the workforce alliance, told IRIN prohibiting health worker migration is not a solution. “The movement of health workers can have both positive and negative consequences. [Because] while remittances sent back home contribute to the economic development of the country, health systems in such countries might be weakened by health worker out-migration.”

Rather, Sheikh said the answer lies in training and retaining more health workers in areas that face severe shortages, such as West Africa.

No matter how developed a country’s economy is, doctor shortage is a shared burden across West Africa. Even though Cape Verdeans earned 10 times more on average than Sierra Leoneans in 2007, according to the World Bank, both countries struggled to treat the sick.

Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, for a population of more than five million there are 75 state medical doctors as of February 2009, according to the Ministry of Health. In addition, there are 25 medical specialists and 23 public health workers.

The country’s only ear, nose and throat specialist Arthur Wright told IRIN he trained in Europe before returning home to work in 1967. “Many of the colleagues who trained with me left during our country’s civil crisis,” said Wright.

During Sierra Leone’s war from 1991 until 2002, human rights observers reported tens of thousands of civilians falling victim to killings and mutilations, and approximately one-third of the population fled.

Wright said medical training in Sierra Leone still has a long way to go to patch the health worker gap. “Brain drain is still a tremendous problem. We lose a lot of doctors to the United States, Saudi Arabia and England every year.

"Even with about 1,000 enrollees at the [local] College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences and 15 to 20 physician graduates every year, 75 percent of them will leave the country. They cannot make a living off of [the government salary] $100 per month,” said Wright.

As a doctor and former professor at the medical school, Wright's pension after 30 years of government service is $140 per month, he told IRIN. “Without my private practice, I could not afford to remain in my country.”

Village doctor is out
LIBERIA: War wounds left to fester
SIERRA LEONE: Sister Rugiatu Kanu, a midwife in Sierra Leone. “We lack everything”
MALAWI: Health worker shortage a challenge to AIDS treatment
IRAQ: Hospitals under pressure as doctors move abroad
The Sierra Leone government has requested 110 doctors from Nigeria, Sudan and Cuba, according to the Ministry of Health. Egypt’s government has pledged to send six specialists.

But Wright told IRIN such recruitment can bring only short-term relief. “We need to address the middle- and long-term needs to improve health services and training. These doctors will leave. And then?”

When asked why he had not left Sierra Leone to pursue more lucrative medical jobs, Wright said: “This is my country. I have to give service to my people.”

Cape Verde

With a population of less than half a million, according to the most recent government census, Cape Verde has no medical school. WHO reported 231 doctors in the archipelago as of 2006, all trained overseas.

To cover the gap, the government pays 50 doctors, mostly Cuban, to work on up to three-year contracts.

More than half of Cuba’s 79,000 doctors work on temporary contracts in more than 70 countries, according to the Cuban government. Host governments pay the doctors’ salaries and benefits.

Visiting doctor Cristina Cedeño told IRIN that rural residents dispersed throughout Cape Verde’s nine inhabited islands have a hard time accessing care. She added that anything beyond basic medical care is still scarce in Cape Verde. “Up until seven days ago, there was only one oncologist. Before that people with money went to Portugal or stayed here for general care.”

Cape Verde's Health Ministry director Jaqueline Pereira told IRIN doctor shortages are a problem. She said discussions to create the country’s first medical school are scheduled to begin this year.

Stop-gap

But for David Werner who wrote the widely-translated 1970s village health care manual, “Where There is No Doctor,” medical specialisation is not necessarily the answer. “Experts come in and think they have all the answers, and end up drowning out solutions villagers could devise themselves.”

Werner said more doctors do not guarantee improved community health. “Doctors are specialists in the narrow area of health care called medicine. More trained community health workers and a fundamental change of the underlying social determinants of health are needed.”

The biologist, author and health educator told IRIN poverty is more powerful than knowledge. “No matter how many experts tell a mother to feed her child, without the means, she cannot follow their advice.”

pt/aa/np

Themes: (IRIN) Economy, (IRIN) Health & Nutrition, (IRIN) Migration


Report can be found online at:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82755

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]


Copyright © IRIN 200

one week 7 villages

Just sitting here in Atlanta airport following a whirlwind visit in Senegal of 7 villages in seven days.
A few highlights-
Able to spend 2 days in our home village...witnessed running water in the village for the first time in their history. Now with that running water there is dreams of a small community garden.
Was able to meet many people on the field...prayer and encouragement were keys to the visit
Able to start a reporting method on villages
Built on existing relationships and made some new ones.

An Atheist Argues that Africa Needs God

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An Atheist Argues that Africa Needs God

By jay on Dec 30, 2008 in Uncategorized

The following article by atheist Matthew Parris, a columnist for the TIMESONLINE, describes his view of how Christianity is critical to African development. The article illustrates the contagious nature of a Christianity that blends proclamation and demonstration–that calls for submission to a King and works for the building of his Kingdom. — Jay

From The Times

December 27, 2008

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset

by Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said.
To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

China adds $11.7 mln in aid to Senegal

DAKAR, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- China adds 80 million yuan (about 11.7 million U.S. dollars) in its support to a variety of projects in Senegal, the Chinese Embassy has said.

Senegalese Economy Minister Abdoulaye Diop and Chinese Ambassador in the West African country Lu Shaye signed a document on Thursday in the capital Dakar.

Under the agreement, China will provide extra support to the projects including the National Grand Theatre in Dakar, the Museum of Black Civilization, the Pikine Pediatric Hospital and the rehabilitation of 11 stadiums across the country.

The newly inked assistance is the latest in a series since November 2008, when China committed 70 million yuan (10.2 million dollars) in non-reimbursable aid to Senegal. On Jan. 6, the two countries signed another two documents under which China will fund Senegal's national security network and the upgrading of Senbus bus parking place.

The agreements show "the dynamic power of our bilateral cooperation," Ambassador Lu said.

"China, the biggest developing country ... will respect its aid engagements and cooperation with other developing countries, especially African countries," the ambassador added.

Diop expressed appreciation of efforts by China to support African development, wishing a further enhancement of Senegalese-Sino cooperation.

SENEGAL: Forecasting the future in an erratic climate

THIES, 5 January 2009 (IRIN) - In the darkness after pre-dawn prayer a village elder would squint at the sky overhead, tilting his head back until his cap fell off, looking for a cluster of bright stars that signalled the middle of the rainy season.

Now many traditional methods are becoming increasingly unreliable predictors of the weather due to climate variability, and African farmers already facing fluctuations need scientific data to help them adapt, farmers and climate experts say.

"You plant your seeds and then the rain doesn't come. So next year you change your approach and you plant later, but the rain comes earlier," said Paul Thiao, a farmer and regional coordinator for the Senegalese Federation of NGOs (FONGS).

"Farmers have become gamblers," he said. "The system has been disturbed and now they must take a gamble on when the rain will come. But they are gambling with their livelihoods."

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Canadian organisation supporting scientific research in developing countries, is working with FONGS and other organisations to diffuse scientific and local knowledge to help Senegalese farmers adapt.

Traditional knowledge essential

Farmers need scientific data on soil fertility levels and adaptive seed varieties in order to assure a good harvest, but traditional cultivation methods and local perspectives on climate change are also vital to maintaining crop yields, said Ndiankou Seye, head of planning and research at the government's regional council of Thiès, 70km from the capital Dakar, told IRIN.

"There are things the climatologists cannot tell you and there are scientific facts that are incomprehensible to the farmer," Seye said.

Madeleine Diouf Sarr, who leads Senegal’s climate change committee at the Ministry of Environment, agreed that efforts to adapt to changing weather patterns must combine traditional and scientific knowledge.

"Even though the [weather] shifts, the plants do not lie. When plants feel a certain amount of humidity they will bloom. So the indigenous approach is as valuable as the science involved," she told IRIN.

Feeling the heat

In Senegal, where more than three-quarters of the population live off the land, many relying on rain-fed crops, farmers are already feeling the sting of unpredictable weather.



Elders in the village of Fandène say they find it increasingly difficult to predict the weather through traditional methods because of climate change
People in the village of Fandène, near Thiès, said the changes include warmer winters, harsher winds, erratic rains and smaller harvests.

Production levels are lower compared to 20 years ago, Therese Mbaye, a local council member, told IRIN. "There is not enough water for the harvest and the marshes have dried up. People have left Fandène for Dakar."

The UN's Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that in some African countries rain-fed agriculture will be reduced by half in just over a decade and climate change will result in less cultivatable land, shorter seasons and lower yields.

Possible consequences, according to the panel of experts, include sharper food scarcity, malnutrition, disease and instability.

For Assize Touré, technical director at the Ecological Monitoring Centre in Dakar, the current changes are worrying enough. "There is not enough emphasis on helping vulnerable communities to adapt to the changes they are already experiencing. It is time to develop strategies."

Meteorological data gap

For successful adaptation, vulnerable populations need accurate data on meteorological patterns, weather forecasts and risk assessment, according to the 2008 UN Human Development Report. But despite their precarious situation, Senegalese farmers have little access to such information, Touré said.

Africa has the world's lowest density of meteorological stations with only one-eighth of the minimum level recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation.

The Environment Ministry's Sarr said predicting rainfall is complex. "You need to have a dense coverage of meteorological observatories in order to predict the weather with precision for specific areas. That is the difficulty in West Africa."

While more detailed meteorological information can result in higher production through strategic planting, Sarr cautioned against leaving everything to science. "Scientific forecasting is limited because you cannot predict very far in advance, which leaves things uncertain right up to the beginning of the [planting] season."

Regional

Fatima Denton, who leads the IDRC's Climate Change Adaptation in Africa project, said policymakers must act. "Adaptation is done at the local level but the results of local actions need to find a way of percolating up to decision-makers so they can act on climate change."

Denton hopes to see cooperation at the regional level not only on addressing known impacts but also on anticipating potential problems.

"It's all about anticipation. Climate variability is just the tip of the iceberg, but we can prepare ourselves in advance," she said. Denton said while awareness is increasing decision-makers in Africa lack a sense of urgency.

"We still have a long way to go to internalise the huge challenge that climate change poses to Africa.