Christmas gifts that support Bwindi Community Health Centre
History
Bwindi Community Health Centre (BCHC) was started by US missionaries Scott and Carol Kellermann in 2003. They opened a Church of Uganda Health Centre in the village of Buhoma close to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in South West Uganda. It provides health care to about 25,000 people in one of the poorest regions of the world. The local people include the Batwa Pygmies who used to live in the forest but were evicted when a National Park was created to protect the mountain gorillas. They now live in poverty.
Health problems in Bwindi
The Batwa have the highest child death rates in Uganda. Many do not own their own land, and almost half of their children die before age five of preventable or treatable diseases such as malaria, dysentery, HIV/AIDS and pneumonia. Malnutrition, a disease of poverty, is rife. Adults fare only slightly better. Many women deliver children at home and die in childbirth, HIV/AIDS is epidemic and TB affects every village.
Services provided
The Health Centre is still young, but is developing quickly. There are two wards that care for patients who are very ill, a delivery unit, a prenatal clinic run by a midwife and outreach programs to isolated Batwa settlements. A community worker manages TB medication and child immunisations. There is also dentistry, and diagnostic facilities including a laboratory, x-ray and ultrasound. BCHC is party funded by user fees (although the poorest do not have to pay) and partly through donations.
Christmas Gifts
You can support the work of BCHC by paying for a Christmas gift that will go directly to help improve the health of some of the poorest people on earth. This gift will be emailed to you as a card that you can print out and give to friends, family or colleagues.
Preventing Malaria
Malaria is the biggest killer of children in the area that BCHC serves. Every day a child is brought in with fever, severe anaemia caused by the malaria parasite destroying the blood cells and a worried parent who has usually already sought treatment from one of the Traditional Healers in the village. Many children in the Health Centre and countless others who do not access our services die from this mosquito-carried disease of the tropics.
£3 ($5) pays for one single mosquito net that will be sold at an affordable price (about 80p, $1.50) to a family of a child with malaria. It will prevent the malaria mosquito biting at night, and kill mosquitos that land on the net, so will protect the whole family. £30 pays for ten of these.
Drugs for malaria are the biggest cost at BCHC. We spend £135 ($250) per month on quinine for treating simple malaria, and artemether and artesunate for severe cases.
Outreach to the Batwa pygmies
Every Friday Bwindi Community Health Centre runs an outreach clinic in Byumba, a Batwa Pygmy settlement about 45 minutes drive away, but still on the edge of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. A team of staff travel every week in a Landrover and see crowds of between 60 and 100 patients requesting help. Most women have had more than eight children, and around half of them have died of preventable diseases like malaria and diarrhoea. Last week we found a woman whose child had malnutrition who had given birth to nine children. This one is her only survivor and is critically ill. Later in 2007 BCHC will turn the building there into a permanent staffed clinic.
The cost of transport, salaries, lunch and medication for a single Outreach Clinic at Byumba is £43 ($80).
Sponsor the salary of a member of staff
Bwindi Community Health Centre costs more than £100,000 ($200,000) each year to run. The highest costs are for staffing.
A nurse at BCHC gets paid between £40 ($75) and £100 ($190) per month. You can sponsor the salary of a nurse for a month or each month for a year (the nurse will not be given your contact details unless you give your permission for this to happen. If the nurse leaves the money will be used to fill her position).
A Clinical Officer at BCHC gets paid between £170 ($320) and £240 ($450) per month. These are experienced, highly-trained Ugandans who diagnose and treat most illnesses and perform procedures.
What you will receive
An e-mailed card with a photograph on the front depicting what your gift will be used for and how it will make a different to the lives of people in the area surrounding Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
What we need
Please send an email to BCHCgifts@googlemail.com. This email needs to contain the following information
Your name:
Your email address:
The name of the person that you are giving the gift to:
The value of the gift:
The exact method of payment:
Confirmation that payment has been made or an undertaking that you will make the payment:
You will receive the emailed gift within 7 days of sending this email.
Payment
Option 1: (preferred): By electronic bank transfer to ‘Bwindi Community Health Centre’, Stanbic Bank, Kihihi, Uganda. Swift code SBICUGKX. Account number 0140072357301.
Option 2: By electronic bank transfer to ‘The Kellermann Foundation’ (US tax ID 34-2018044), Citizen’s Bank, Nevada City (tel.530-478-6000) account no. 041016379
Option 3: Post a cheque payable to ‘Kellermann Foundation’ to PO Box 1901, Penn Valley, California, 95946, USA.
In early 2007 there will be more payment options available that will be listed on the website www.BCHC.ug (currently hosted at www.mypulse8.co.uk/bchc.ug). You will be able to pay via a UK based charity (with gift aid), via www.justgiving.com and www.firstgiving.com. These options will be advertised when they are available.
Friends of Paul Williams or Vicky Holt can make payments into their bank accounts in the UK that will be drawn upon in Uganda. Please email them to make arrangements.
If you wish to support the work of BCHC in other ways (there are many larger projects such as an Ambulance Appeal and a new Women’s Health unit that we are seeking funds for) or wish to become a ‘Friend of BCHC’ yourself and make monthly or annual donations in return for regular updates, please send an email to BCHCfriends@googlemail.com.