Health Care & Hygiene
Hygiene & Sanitation programme
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Except for the houses built by another NGO projects, traditional households in Nosy Komba do not have toilets nor bathrooms. Local people normally bath in the river and defecate either in the sea or in the river, which is the source of their everyday water. Besides the lack of privacy, this raises serious health issues spreading diseases, such as cholera.
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The goal of this project is to develop, produce and install bathrooms (including a toilet, a sink and a septic tank) at low cost in the local households of the interested families.
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The design was conceived in 2013 to minimize cost and production complexity, allowing the increase of the local know-how and creating a new local company capable of doing the whole bathroom production and installation. In 2015, after the pilot phase, the project entered the full production phase with the development of three new moulds allowing for parallel production and installation.
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Here is how we contribute:
INSTALL BATHROOMS AT LOW COST:
a toilet, a sink and a septic tank
STIMULATE LOCAL COMPANY:
self sustainability
Maternity/Health centre
Madagascar has extremely high child mortality and maternal mortality rates (1). The population of Nosy Komba is particularly exposed to this due to the distance from any medical centre and the total lack of trained personnel to support the families throughout pregnancy and during childbirth. As a result, not only there is a high risk that the child or the mother dies during labor, but there is also a high number of disabled children due to the poor follow up of pregnancies.
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In 2016, we opened a maternity centre and contributed to adapt a building to host delivery rooms. The project is supported by local nurses/midwives who manage the maternity centres autonomously and commit to be at the service of the whole population, independently of their age, origin or income.
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Due to the absence of any medical support on the island, the nurses also provide primary medical care to the local population and manage a small pharmacy. Finally, the midwives also support the education program by organizing health and hygiene classes at the school.
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Here is how we contribute:
CREATION OF 1 MATERNITY CENTRES
SUPPORT FROM NURSES/MIDWIVES
PROVISION OF FACILITIES, EQUIPMENT AND BASIC PEDIATRIC CARE
Emergency fund
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The population of Nosy Komba has extremely limited access to Health Care infrastructures. Besides this, for the vast majority of the population, there is a great lack of awareness and especially of means for people in emergency situations to be treated. This often results in tragic situations and the local population requests our group’s support frequently.
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In 2018, we have decided to start raising an emergency fund and have allocated for this 2000€ (about 5% of our budget). This fund has allowed assisting in a more structured and consistent way people in urgent need. Just this year, besides assisting people in several small emergencies (e.g. deep cuts, infected wounds, working accidents, etc.), we also supported financially 3 people in need of help for surgeries to treat life threatening situations.
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Here is how we contribute:
FINANCIAL SUPPORT
