For 50 days, ChildFund International (our American sister organisation) is joining with numerous organisations to demonstrate support for government policies and programs that will allow women and girls to be healthy, empowered, and safe – no matter where they live. Improving the Health of Women and Girls is this week’s theme.
Visiting the doctor is usually a mild inconvenience in the United States. It may entail a drive across town and a sit in a waiting room filled with people coughing and sneezing. But in Senegal, which has only 822 doctors serving a population of more than 12 million, seeking medical attention is a major undertaking.
For some families, it’s too much. Sadio is the mother of two-year old twin girls in the village of Pakala, which is often flooded during the rainy season – making it extremely difficult to travel 6 kilometres to the nearest health post staffed by nurses. Both Awa and Adama suffer from Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI); Adama is particularly ill, with a debilitating cold that requires care from a doctor – a 50 kilometre journey from their home.
Sadio and her husband Moussa, a farmer, have experienced loss before; their first child, Matar, died in 2007 at just 13-months old from diarrhoea and a respiratory infection. But today their village has a health hut, which is staffed by a matron, community health workers and birth attendants. They can help patients with basic needs, but more complicated illnesses and ailments still call for a trip to the health post 5 kilometres or the 50 kilometre journey to the hospital.
Sadio reports that her diet improved during her pregnancy with the twins after receiving advice at the health hut, but her little girls still face challenges from their respiratory infection.
The health of women and girls is important to ChildFund; we are working with local partners to provide access to health care in isolated villages as well as underserved urban areas in developing nations.
In Senegal, ChildFund is leading the implementation of a $40 million grant from USAID to establish community health care services for children and families in great need.
Over five years, we plan to establish 2,151 health huts and 1,717 outreach sites throughout the country, along with a sustainable national community health policy working in partnership with USAID and other key community development organisations.
By the end of the project, we expect to have helped more than 9 million Senegalese people in 72 districts – we hope this will help young children, like Awa and Adama receive the proper healthcare they deserve.
Despite being one of the most peaceful and democratic nations in West Africa, Senegal has a serious lack of medical care. With a population of almost 13 million, more than half of whom are under the age of 20, Senegal’s children are in danger of falling ill from malaria and other preventable diseases. Poor sanitation and lack of access to medical services jeopardize the lives of many more.
ChildFund has worked in Senegal since 1985, and although much progress has been made, access to health care remains a serious concern in many parts of the country. In 2010, 75 out of 1,000 children under the age of 5 died and almost 20 percent of infants born between 2006 and 2010 were underweight at birth. During this time period, 19 percent of children suffered from moderate to severe stunting due to malnutrition and food scarcity, according to UNICEF.
Life-threatening illnesses like AIDS are also a serious problem in Senegal. Approximately 59,000 people of all ages were living with HIV in 2009, and around 32,000 cases of mother-to-child HIV transmission were reported in the same year.
Senegal has observed marginal gains in response to poverty reduction efforts by aid organizations and the Senegalese government, but there is still much to be done. According to the World Bank, the poverty headcount ratio in Senegal was more than 55 percent in 2001. Today, that figure stands at just above 46 percent. In addition, access to improved water supplies increased by 3 percentage points between 2006 and 2010, and overall life expectancies have risen steadily in recent years. Maintaining positive momentum is important to the welfare of Senegalese children and their families.
To improve access to health care in communities across Senegal, ChildFund has launched a range of initiatives. We support health huts that provide wellness education and training to empower people to live healthier lives, and we have distributed more than 800,000 chemically treated mosquito nets in Senegal to combat the spread of malaria, one of Senegal’s biggest killers. In addition, the community health program has helped bring clean drinking water to rural villages across the country, reducing the spread of waterborne bacteria.
ChildFund is also leading the fight against malnutrition in Senegal. We are the lead executing agent of the Programme de Renforcement de la Nutrition (PRN) initiative, a collaborative project with the government of Senegal that aims to improve the growth of children under the age of 5 and facilitate more effective nutritional interventions in at-risk communities, both rural and urban.
