KE 18 – SUPPORT FOR THE DISPENSARY OF AMAKURIAT
Project Location
The project is carried out in Amakuriat, Kenya, West Pokot – in the Catholic dispensary run by the Comboni Missionary Sisters that offers health services to the population of Amakuriat and nearby villages. Amakuriat is a village with many small villages dispersed in a large territory that has about 30,000 inhabitants.
The area is located in a semi-desert, rural area, far from important population centers, and borders Uganda where the Karamojong people, also semi-nomadic shepherds, live. In the territory resources such as water and pastures are scarce, and since the soil is fertile the shepherds over the years have learned to grow corn and beans but the seasonal rains are very unstable and often the harvest do not reach full maturity putting in serious difficulty families who struggle to find alternatives to support themselves.
This area is marginalized because it is far from the important centers and offers few services to the local population. The dispensary was built precisely to meet this situation.
Project description
The people of Amakuriat and nearby villages rely on our dispensary because it is an important reference to receive quality health care at very low costs. The dispensary has a small analysis laboratory, trained staff and every day receives many sick people who also come on foot from afar. To make this structure work better and to achieve the economic autonomy of the health center we have installed a computerized system with the aim of improving the management and sustainability of the dispensary.
The system helps maintain control over medicines and provide statistical data on the type of care required by patients requested by the government. The system consists of five computers connected to each other and with a central computer.
Our difficulty is that electricity is less and less stable to the point that you can stay even a month without light, which means that the system cannot be used. The project aims to solve this problem with the installation of solar panels that in addition to covering this need, guarantees the continuous operation of refrigerators to store medicines.
Objectives
- Ensuring continuous energy to the dispensary through the installation of solar panels
- Ensure the maintenance of medicines in refrigerators
- Help the dispensary better monitor its costs to maintain its sustainability
Beneficiaries
Direct: the sick who come to the dispensary
Indirect: about 30,000 inhabitants of the area
Referent sister of the project: Sr. Estelle Adangloe
Project's costs