Give 5 Villages in Senegal Access to Healthcare

Neighbor Ape is happy to report that one of our first accomplishments in terms of giving villages in Senegal access to healthcare has been to help schoolchildren from the dormitory project we support in Kedougou.  Our organizations is working in conjunction with the Beudik organization, registered in Senegal, to build a dormitory in Kedougou for rural village children who live outside the main population center of Kedougou, in the Kedougou region.  

In addition to providing lodging in Kedougou so village children can attend better schools in this regional town, we have also been able to provide assistance with these children's healthcare needs.  Although being in the town of Kedougou means the Neighbor Ape/OBRAR dormitory residents have better access to education and healthcare facilities, they are also somewhat removed from their parents who remain in the village, and access to healthcare in Senegal is relatively expensive for most people.  Therefore, Neighbor Ape has been able to help defray some of the greater expenses for the schoolchildren, especially in emergency situations.

Additionally, our organization assisted in providing medical care in one case of a severely ill patient in Kedougou whose family and friends were unable to collect enough funds to cover all his medical bills. The medical reforms of past decades in Senegal have resulted in greater discrepancies in the ability to pay for those in rural areas especially where barter systems have been used traditionally. We are happy that we can provide some assistance in the most dire circumstances, especially, and in helping provide seed money to fledgling community healthcare insurance systems (see our project description).