● 3E Project: Healthcare in the Gambia

Following an inspiring talk by Dr Barbara Phillips the club has set itself an ambitious target of raising £10,000 for the SIGBI 3E Project: Healthcare during its three year run.

Our speaker, Barbara Phillips, is the joint project lead for the Strengthening Emergency Healthcare programme in the Gambia and a volunteer with Maternal Childhealth Advocacy International (MCAI), our partners in the project.  Before her retirement she was a consultant in paediatric A&E at the Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool and one of the country’s leading experts in this field.

With the help of very informative slideshow, Barbara gave us a clear-eyed and personal account of MCAI’s work in the Gambia.  The aim of the programme is to improve the management of emergencies during pregnancy, childbirth, infancy and childhood.  The hospital in Brikama has been renovated and provided with emergencies equipment and medicines.  An emergency ambulance service now links the rural community with the hospital through a mobile telephone system. Health professionals both in the hospital and in the community villages have been trained in obstetric, neonatal and paediatric emergency management using skills’ based education.

MCAI’s efforts have been rewarded with a significant drop in maternal and infant mortality, although still shockingly high compared with UK statistics.  From all that we heard we can be confident that we are investing in a successful, sustainable and worthwhile project.

There is still much to be done.  Barbara told us that lack of staff and inadequate funding of the public sector means all existing health workers are faced with enormous workloads leading to burn out, low morale and attrition to the private health sector or to non-medical occupations which pay better and do not require such hard work and frustrations.

Click here to read more about this project on the SIGBI website.

Click here to see Barbara’s presentation (PowerPoint needed)