Read about Ron & Viv's journey so far through Africa - Keyafer, Lower Omo Valley - KEYAFER HEALTH CENTRE - August 2007.

 

 

 

Ethiopia

 

 

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Demelash Habtie Teferadegne OIC (back), and Admassu Tesfaye (front) the 2IC and head nurse of the health centre showed us around the Centre and the patients they had – this girl had come in suffering from cerebral maleria (she was lucky to be alive!!)

 

Demelash Habtie Teferadegne OIC in his office.

 

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AFRICA TRIP

Early to Mid August – Southern Ethiopia - Lower Omo Valley

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Keyafer Health Centre, Keyafer

This Centre has to deal with malaria, worm problems, hygiene, TB & leprosy, home inspections, dysentery, births and AIDs – and these are just some of the everyday issues they are confronted with. Their main aims are preventative and curative, and they do the best they possibly can with what's available.

Out here in these remote areas of Ethiopia birth rates are high but many kids die before they are 10 years old. AIDS in these poorly educated rural areas is very high. For the elderly, medical help is often far away and very limited. There is no social security and people work from the age of three or four to the day they die!

Demelash Habtie Teferadegne (left) (email: demelash.dnh@yahoo.com ; ph:+251 (0) 912 150 397) is the current OIC of the Centre, and a delightful bloke and we got on well, as was his 2IC and head nurse of the health centre Admassu Tesfaye (right).

 

 

 

 

Helen and Viv were able to hand over some goodies to Demelash and Admussa for the Centre – little knitted jumpers and caps for the babies that will be born there and in the surrounding area, which were received most gratefully, along with a few spare bandages from their own first aid kits.

 

 

We were also given a guided tour of the centre by Demelash and Admussa, who are very proud of their Centre and the achievements they make with the facilities and infrastructure that are available to them – which isn't much. It may be a bit basic as far as Australian standard bush hospitals are concerned but it is all they have for the whole area and service about 43,000 people.

 

 

They have just 4 beds, and had a couple of patients in at the time of our visit -   the woman who had been brought in with the swollen knee the night before (which had blown to the size of a small football – not good for a nomad who has to walk kilometres to get water or to collect firewood), and one other women who was on an IV drip – she had been brought in unconscious suffering from cerebral malaria a few days previously and had been saved. While she still wasn't great, she was receiving treatment and her prognosis was good.

When we say ‘brought in' we mean not by ‘ambulance' but by a group of fit young men from the village carrying a bush made stretcher or litter. In each case they had trotted for miles with their patiant.

If anybody would like to help this very important health centre for the surrounding communities you can try the contacts above (which is probably the best way to go), or write to:

SNNPR
Bena Stemay Key Afar Health Centre
c/-South Omo Zone Health Department
PO Box 121
Arba Minch, Ethiopia.

Any help or support (however small) would be well received and would save a life or two, or make someone's life a little easier.

Maybe there is a school who would like a humanitarian project for the kids to get involved in – this Health Centre is a good a project as any and certainly deserving.

This map shows the huge area and different tribal groups that the Centre has to cover.

The pathology and lab.                                       One of the consulting rooms at the Centre.

     

 

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