Healthcare Development Challenges and Successes- Kimanjo Health Centre: becoming reality!

Work on the foundations of the new Kimanjo Health Centre is progressing very well. Yesterday we prayed for rain so that we can get on with the foundation slab, and our prayers have been answered-at least in part. The clouds that have been circling for a few days have finally began to descend. 

The Health Centre has been nearly a year in the planning. Our great thanks to the Kimanjo community and the Group Ranches who have worked with us to bring this to fruition. There have been many hurdles along the way but it is the challenges that bring communities together in the pursuit of quality health care. Few things unite impoverished people like the search for affordable and good health care. (Even President Obama would have felt that unity within his least well heeled electorate..) In all development projects there are frustrations to be faced along the way as bureaucratic and unnecessary  hurdles are put in the way in an attempt to steer projects off course due to other conflicting agendas. Only patience , stamina, dogged determination and the will of the local community can  keep matters on course until the winds of change gather momentum . We don’t pretend that the next year will be easy, but we do know that we are well past the start gate.

 Thanks again to the District Water Office for the assistance they have given us to get all the right paperwork to sink a new bore hole in Kimanjo to supply water for the facility. Without the help of our kind friend  the District Water Officer, this would not have  gone so smoothly. As we blogged before , the success of our water projects at Lentille is due in large part to the great Public Private Partnership that we have developed.

This is a large project that will result in both an  in patient and an out patient wing, an operating theatre and x-ray room,  maternity suite, accommodation for visiting doctors , meeting room etc. On completion,  the facility will become totally  government owned and we very much hope for close collaboration in its staffing and equipping .

We have now been working in community health care on the Group Ranches for 4 years: it is as a result of the repeated requests from so many GR members that we began, one year ago, to plan for a health centre. Good quality local, affordable  health care is number one on most people’s agenda. As always in our community work it is the time given over for regular community meetings , coordination, information sharing and information gathering and generally giving a voice to all groups that pays dividends  in allowing development to take place in a way that will be valued and made use of by the community.

All of us working in community development have much to learn but most of that learning will come not from books but from listening to people on the ground on a daily basis. Living at Lentille we are privileged in being able to spend more time on the ground than most people, it is up to us to use that privilege wisely.