The Oasis Foundation
Grace Village
Ethiopia

Health Activities

Goal and Objectives

Goal:   To provide aid and teach health

Objectives:

• To promote through a carefully planned health sensitization good personal hygiene with all associated subjects.
• To encourage best home-care practices within the rural village setting.
• To stimulate communities to create a healthy environment.
• To provide funds for those too sick or unable to help themselves.
• To support financially as funds permit those who are referred by the local authorities and then assessed independently by the organization as deemed needy.
• To facilitate provisions in emergency situations.

Strategies and Implementation

Health education will begin with personal hygiene and health care. The Oasis Foundation is moving from clinic-based care to a trained nurse (supervised by two experienced trained nurses) who will be moving into the community to teach through demonstration, role-play, drama, lecture and other simple methods.

Currently there is the community of Kelakle where liver disease due to poisoning has decimated the community. These have been moved away from the source, and orphaned children are being assisted. Other related illnesses have been identified, and only one nurse is currently working in the clinic. Strengthening of the work being done through health education will be a priority for year one, with other vulnerable and marginalized groups being identified by the local authority and added to the Kelakle Community.

The education will include:

• How the individual may improve his/her health by cleanliness of body, of water; how to avoid HIV/AIDS and other STIs; how to care for children; the use of mosquito nets; wound care and treatment of diarrheal diseases especially in children. Other topics will be addressed when appropriate to a given community.

• How in the home parents and older children can prevent accidents in the home, the care of knives and other sharp instruments, careful dampening of fires and avoidance of other dangers within the home. They will be shown how to carefully store food away from vermin and other pests; how to rid the home from vermin as much as possible; how to protect especially small children from malaria in the evening and very early mornings.

• How to ensure that a given community has sufficient water, adequate community storage with good protection against predators, learning to set up emergency transportation systems for laboring mothers, or other related health emergencies; possibly establish a wireless telephone if very remote to call for help.

• Identification of women with childbirth injuries to be brought to Grace Village to the Fistula Waiting Area (FWA); these will be expedited free of charge to Mekelle to treatment once the Obstetric Fistula is correctly identified at FWA. At the FWA the women will be housed and fed before going to the Mekelle Hamlin Fistula Centre. This component will be coordinated with the Mekelle Hamlin Fistula Centre so will have a broader catchment area and will not be limited to Tahtay Koraro Woreda only.

Rural development includes aid, which despite the best efforts to reach out and provide self-help means to being independent. There are groups who are so ill, so demoralized, so shocked they are quite unable to work to survive and who if not helped will die.

There are those so ill from AIDS, TB or other debilitating disease that may come and ask for help towards food. The local authority may refer those they judge needy. There is the emergency group for famine, floods etc. The Oasis Foundation is situated in an area that has seen conflicts of war, so being ready should be another component for assistance.