The Merlin Kenya team co-ordinates a huge health and nutrition program. Teams continue to respond to the food crisis with emergency mobile and outreach teams in the arid areas of the north west of Kenya. The teams run safe motherhood programs in three districts of Turkana and malaria and primary health care projects in Kisii (in central, west Kenya). A program focusing on disabled people has just begun, to improve access to the more focused health and well being care required.
If you love our work, then tell the world! You have an exciting opportunity to help Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International) make even more of a difference. GreatNonprofits - a site like Amazon Book Reviews or TripAdvisor - is a website where people can share their stories about nonprofits that they really believe in.
Will you help us raise awareness and support for our life saving work, by posting a review of about Merlin? All reviews will be visible to potential donors. It's easy and only takes a few minutes.
Please click on the below link and log your comment:http://greatnonprofits.org/organizations/reviews/medical-emergency-relief-international-usa-inc
With your help, we can gain visibility and ultimately funds for our health care work around the world.
Merlin can offer health services to women, children and families in Kenya, because of you. Thank you.
With your gifts on Global Giving, we have raised $15,000 towards Merlin’s emergency response to the food crisis in East Africa. Unfortunately, the crisis continues and our teams are now planning response activities into 2013. This means that we still need your support, and our next target is to reach $20,000.
Merlin has been providing nutrition services in Kerio, Turkana since 2006. As part of our response to the food crisis, last June activities in Kerio’s health facility were scaled up, and community health workers began conducting outreach visits to communities, up to six miles from the facility.
One baby identified by the health workers as severely malnourished, was eight month old Napeyok (see photo). She was referred immediately to Merlin’s outpatient therapeutic feeding program at Kerio’s health facility. At the time, Napeyok weighed 7.9lbs and had a mid-upper-arm circumference of 4.2” (a measurement of 4.3” or below indicates that a child is suffering from severe acute malnutrition). She was also suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, and tested positive for malaria.
Napeyok’s mother, Veronica Ipoo Esirete (pictured with Napeyok), had been raising six children alone in a village near to Kerio. She used to own 30 goats – the family’s source of food and livelihood, but the severe drought led to the depletion of green pastures and the death of the goats. Veronica became unable to provide breast milk (due to being malnourished herself) for the youngest children and with a continued lack of food; soon the whole family were suffering from various degrees of malnourishment.
Once Merlin began caring for Napeyok, her condition steadily improved. She was given medication and supplies of PlumpyNut (a highly nutritious peanut butter paste packed with calories and vitamins, especially formulated to help nourish children) by Merlin health workers and her mom brought her to the clinic every week for check ups. By November, Napeyok was still malnourished, but only moderately so, and was transferred to a supplementary feeding program – where children are given regular meals of corn-soya blend (a fortified porridge). In January of this year, Napeyok was finally discharged from the feeding program completely.
Napeyok is now 16 months old, and her family has moved in with relatives in Kerio who share their meals of beans and maize in return for Veronica fetching firewood and water. It is a temporary solution, but ensures that the family does not go hungry, and allows the family to begin building up thier livestock again.
Veronica says thank you and adds, if it were not for Merlin, Napeyok, who was so weak and is always vulnerable to illnesses, would not have survived.
If you love our work, then tell the world! You have an exciting opportunity to help Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International) make even more of a difference. GreatNonprofits - a site like Amazon Book Reviews or TripAdvisor - is a website where people can share their stories about nonprofits that they really believe in.
Will you help us raise visibility and support for our life saving work by posting a review of about us?
All reviews will be visible to potential donors and volunteers. It's easy and only takes a few minutes. Please go to:
http://greatnonprofits.org/organizations/reviews/medical-emergency-relief-international-usa-inc and log your comment.
With your help, we can increase awareness, gain visibility and raise support for our health and nutrition care in east Africa and around the world.
Thank you from everyone at Merlin.
Merlin has been working in Chad for nearly three months now. Why did we send out an Emergency Response Team in the first place? The facts speak for themselves:
Our emergency response was led by Lea Gilbert (see photos below). Once on the ground, Lea and the initial team began the set up process. Merlin’s logistician Justin Bangue searched out an appropriate base, to be used as an office and place to sleep, eat and have a little down time. He and Lea were also in charge of liaising with country representatives of government donors about ongoing funding and talking to various Chad government departments to make sure all the paper work was in order, including recruitment procedures and non-profit certifications.
Justin also coordinated the delivery of procured supplies and medicines, to make sure everything was in place for our health and mobile teams, to make sure they could start offering services as soon as possible.
The health & nutrition teams come under the supervision of Angela Muruiki, Merlin’s Health Manager in Chad. She has been leading training sessions with local health staff and outreach teams in basic health and nutrition care. Angela ensures that every health worker has the required skills to offer quality health care to everyone that needs it, including those living in more rural and remote communities. Since the outreach services were available, and now word has spread, the number of families visiting the outreach clinics has risen each week, from double to triple figures.
Angela’s team has also set up a therapeutic Feeding Center in Massaguet Hospital, one of only 3 hospitals in Hadjer Lamis province, in the central, west of Chad. On June 13th alone, the Feeding Center received more than 30 new, severely malnourished children into the feeding program, and a neighboring health clinic registered 50 more.
Our teams will be there to help 100’s, maybe 1000’s more children, mothers, the elderly, in fact anyone that needs our care, over the coming months.
If you love our work, then tell the world! You have an exciting opportunity to help Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International) make even more of a difference. GreatNonprofits - a site like Amazon Book Reviews or TripAdvisor - is a website where people can share their stories about nonprofits that they really believe in.
Will you help us raise awareness and support for our life saving work, by posting a review of about Merlin?All reviews will be visible to potential donors. It's easy and only takes a few minutes. Please go to:http://greatnonprofits.org/organizations/reviews/medical-emergency-relief-international-usa-inc and log your comment.
With your help, we can gain visibility and ultimately funds for our health care work around the world.
Merlin can respond to situations such as the food crisis in Sahel, because of you. Thank you.
Links:
