FOL support reaches $36,000 with three grants for medical and community work
Friends of Liberia board, meeting in New Orleans Sept. 20, voted an additional $14,000 to bring the total contributed for Ebola relief to $50,000, halfway to our goal.
An initial $20,000 from the general fund was divided equally in August between Doctors Without Borders and Global Health Ministries. In mid-September, with summer contributions of $16,000 from members and friends, FOL awarded grants to three more organizations meeting local needs. These were identified by a special task force, made up of board members, officers and members who are in touch with organizations in Liberia. FOL gave $8,000 to support the revival of the Catholic Hospital and its network of clinics, all closed after the loss of their administrator and other health workers to Ebola early in the epidemic. The remainder was divided between Refuge Place, a Liberian-run clinic in Chicken Soup Factory, outside Monrovia, and Women’s Campaign International, which supports the National Rural Women’s Program In Liberia.
Under the auspices of Sister Barbara Brillant, Dean of Mother Patern College of Health Sciences in Monrovia, the staff of the Catholic hospital system is being trained in dealing with the full array of medical emergencies while protecting themselves against the infection by Ebola.
On hearing of the FOL grant, Sister Barbara wrote:
Supplies donated by FOL
“This is so great as we are starting our training this week at Catholic Hospital and then next week sending a group to Cape Palmas and another to Gbarnga for training in health facilities with a truck of Personal Protective Equipment. Every little bit helps. You may be aware many of our pregnant women continue to die during childbirth because many hospitals are shut down or the few that are open are very afraid to get involved in delivery as it poses very serious risk of Ebola infection in the absence of protective gears.”
“Many of the operating clinics are still faced with the lack of these essential protective gears and thus pregnant women are now the victims. This is also causing the deaths of many children from common illness like malaria (which has fever similar to Ebola) and diarrhea (similar to
Ebola) . . . our health system is paralyzed as over 70 health workers have died from the Ebola virus.”
Sister Barbara has recently written for the Huffington Post.
Refuge Place Clinic near Chicken Soup Factory is under the auspices of Dr. Mosoka Fallah, a microbiologist who has been working on checking the spread of Ebola and who began Refuge Place some years ago to address the needs of those newly arrived in Monrovia. He reported:
“We at Refuge Place Clinic decided that we will re-open our doors to provide 100 percent free treatment to pregnant women and children. But to reduce the risk of infection to our health care workers, we decided to consult with the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide training to our workers on infection control and identifying Ebola patients.”
See what the New York Times said about Dr. Mosaka Fallah, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/world/africa/ebola-liberia.html
Fighting Ebola at the village level. Bucket to store water for hand washing.
Finally, Women’s Campaign International (WCI), whose executive director, Nancy Wallace, was with the first Peace Corps Response group into Liberia after the war, is working with the National Rural Women’s Program to identify specific needs of Ebola affected communities. She is assisted in Liberia by Monica Gadkari, (RPCV Romania). In their network of 200 rural communities, they have identified a dozen communities affected by Ebola. The $4,000 grant from Friends of Liberia will help them respond quickly to needs identified by their network. Communities need fuel to remove suspected Ebola victims, food for quarantined families and neighborhoods, and public awareness on how to keep safe in infected areas. WCI has a photo-based safety training segment for use by their rural women leaders.
They shared this poignant report Sept. 16 from their Nimba County field officer as deaths surge:
“There is an increase in the death rate in Ganta today, 2 persons died yesterday and 9 persons today from the newly quarantine communities just mentioned last night in the proposal, the death rate in Ganta likely to rise in the coming days. There are over 260 people presently in quarantine, and some … have started dying from yesterday. 13 new infected cases reported today.”
The landscape of need changes rapidly as large donors begin to engage with the epidemic. FOL’s Ebola Task Force continues to identify unmet needs at the community level and will report here and on Facebook about grants from new funds raised.