The Sierra Leone Ministry of Health does distribute and administer vaccinations to children however keeping the vaccines cold so they don't expire or go bad is a constant challenge. Getting out to the rural areas of Sierra Leone like the Kono district is also a challenge and a barrier to health. Now that we have a way to keep the vaccines cold, we will be able to keep a stock at our medical center and administer them to our pediatric patients. Diseases like measles and polio take lives (often young ones) all to often in a place like Sierra Leone due to poor sanitation and a lack of health services. Vaccines do keep children and communities healthy so we are very grateful to have this opportunity at our medical center.
In other news, we've purchased our second vehicle with a recent grant that we received. This vehicle will help us restart our village outreach to five surrounding villages. This outreach had been put on hold due to the Ebola crisis and we've been eager to restart this for the past two months. The village outreach is essentially going into each village and holding a day long medical clinic once a month. In addition, we meet with village leaders in order to help gain a better understanding about the health and non-health needs of each village. We are also looking to train a few community health workers in each village so that they can attend to the medical needs of their fellow villagers in our absence as well as be the medical liaisons for their village and our medical center in Kono.
