By Mitch Lewis | Executive Director
It is an exciting time at ATEG as we prepare to expand our KLEM shoe making program into the Democratic Republic of Congo and get closer to opening the clinic for treating street children in Bamako, Mali.
Congo
This September, our ATEG Board member, the Rev. Stephane Kolonji will be traveling to Congo. He will be meeting in Kinshasa with Rock Rwakishaya, our Team Leader in Uganda. They will hold a training workshop for our new Congo team and possibly a representative from Chad. The program will begin in the rural areas around Kinshasa but we hope that it will soon expand to other areas of this vast country.
Mali
The Mali Ministry of Women’s and Children’s Development has provided a facility for us to establish our clinic. It is in a section of Bamako that is called “The City of Children” and is the main area that the street children gather. The Ministry of Health has been calling this facility a “clinic” but the sad reality is that it has no medical equipment, no drugs, no doctors, only one nurse, and was deeply in need of renovation. We have begun renovating the facility and ordering medical equipment and pharmaceuticals to turn it into a first rate clinic. We are preparing an outreach program intended to bring large numbers of street children into the clinic for an initial examination. Most of these children have never before been seen by a health worker so it is important to bring them into the health care system and chart their baseline health.
Although our original intent was to focus on foot diseases, we are planning to also address many other medical issues faced by these children. We expect to be giving vaccinations, hygiene and wellness classes, distributing bed nets to prevent malaria and giving young women pregnancy counseling. We hope this clinic will become a model for how we can bring life saving medical care, and comfort to vulnerable street children throughout Africa.
By Mitch Lewis | Executive Director
By Mitch Lewis | Executive Director
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