By Jill Pruetz | Project Leader
We continue to provide medical support for those in need at Fongoli - and again, none of our assistance would be possible without your generous donations, so thank you! Fortunately, there have been no major accidents, and our assistance lately has focused on more of the common maladies faced by people in this area of Senegal. So, we have aided people in acquiring malaria curative and pain reliever for headaches, which are common here and can prove debilitating.
Unfortunately, we continue to see high levels of infant mortality in the area, but we are hopeful that we will be able to move ahead in helping to establish a dispensary at the large village of Djendji, at the edge of the Fongoli chimpanzees' home range. We also plan to help identify someone in the village to go for training in basic medical care and knowledge so that they can independently operate the dispensary. This is a program that is already in place in this area in Senegal, and so we have a model in place; specifically, there is such a program at the village of Thiobo, home village to the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project's project manager, Dondo Kante, so we will work closely with the Thiobo program to establish a similar one at Djendji.
In order to put such a program in place, we plan to host an anthropology student at Iowa State University with an interest in the junction between traditional medicine and Western medical practices. She proposes to conduct a research project in the area, and part of her research will involve working with people in Djendji to better understand their needs and wants in terms of the dispensary project.
We're very excited about this project and hope to get it jump-started this year! Thank you again for all your generous help!
By Jill Pruetz | Project Leader
By Jill Pruetz | Director, Neighbor Ape organization
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