Health
According to Dr. Swaleh Shahbal, Kinango District Medical Officer of Health, infant mortality rate is 91.5/1000 compared to 78/1000 nationally. The under-five (5) mortality rate is 149/1000 compared to 114/1000 nationally. The maternal mortality rate is 650/1000000 live births compared to 414/1000000 live births nationally. Maternal delivery at a health facility is only 18%. It has 19 dispensaries, one health center and one district hospital. Mnyenzeni, the largest village in the Koins Service Area, houses one of the highest volume dispensaries in the district.Currently, Koins is working together with the Ministry of Education to establish a women’s center which will significantly reduce the maternal mortality rate in the district. This center will not only provide delivery services and women’s health services, it will be a place of continuing education for health professionals and local women where organizations such as UNICEF, WHO, and LDS Charities will collaborate to address the significant health needs of the women and children of the Koins service area. Koins has already begun this continuing education by partnering with LDS Charities in providing Neonatal Resuscitation Training (NRT).
Water
To date, water projects in our village area have consisted of building 30,000 liter water cisterns to collect rain water from the roofs of school buildings. This has proven to be an excellent way to store fresh water for the needs of our school children, but has done nothing to help the villagers in their daily quest for fresh water.
In November 2008, engineers from LDS Humanitarian determined where 3 bore holes could successfully be drilled within our service area. These wells will be donated by the LDS Church, for the benefit of the villagers living with proximity of these wells.
The wells are located in the areas of:
Mwache – designed to serve 1,100 students from Mwache primary school and 500 local women
Bofu – serving 780 students of Bofu primary school, 80 students from Bofu secondary school, Bofu health center and the entire population of 5,000 people
Miguneni area well drilled at a place called Vyogato under the the leadership of Jane Mangale. It serves 700 students from the Miguneni primary school and the entire population of 1,300 people.
A recent article in an LDS church publication tells of the drilling of such wells in Kenya:
“Water Project Provides More than Just Water,” Ensign, Jan. 2009, 78
As water sprayed from a new well drilled into the Kenyan countryside, villagers from the Makueni region shouted for joy. Some danced. Some cried. It meant no more 30-kilometer walks to fetch water in lieu of drinking from contaminated rivers.
The Church’s clean water initiative is providing remote communities like Makueni with hand-pump wells to reduce water-borne diseases. But by allowing villagers to spend less time fetching water, the wells also enable families to spend more time together and children to attend school more frequently.
In July 2008, in the neighboring district of Mwingi, the Church, with help from the local residents, built 30 wells that serve 56,000 people. Around the same time, 20 wells in Masinga, Kenya, were also completed, serving 32,000 people. Seven other projects in the country are in process.
As with other major humanitarian initiatives, the clean water projects incorporate principles of self-reliance and sustainability. A community water committee becomes responsible for maintaining the system. The Church supplies the committee with the necessary tools and trains them on hygiene so they can use the water safely and properly.
While local contractors take care of major construction elements like drilling, community members are expected to help, digging trenches, moving pipe, and mixing cement, among other things.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 400 people are digging a 30-kilometer trench and laying pipe to create a gravity-fed water system. The four-year project will benefit an estimated 160,000 people, making it the largest clean water project the Church has funded.
With an estimated 23 projects in progress for 2008, the clean water initiative continues to touch hundreds of thousands of lives. Since 2002 the projects have provided more than four million people in 50 countries with access to clean water.
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With our record of success in rallying our communities in helping build our projects, our hope is that we will be able to drill additional wells in more of our villages. The estimated cost per well is $10,000. Although the initial 3 wells will be donated by the LDS Church, we hope to find sponsors that will help us to secure funding for additional wells.
If you would like to contribute to a well or cistern project, you can go to our donation site
(link here to Acceptiva page) and choose Water Projects in the drop down box under Donation Destination.
Neo-Natal Resuscitation
In November, 2008, Kristin Brown, Executive Director for Koins for Kenya, joined Deb Whipple of LDS Humanitarian Services for a Neo-natal Resuscitation clinic that trained about 60 Kenyan health workers as Skilled Birth Attendants.
The purpose of the clinic was to train local Kenyan health workers in simple resuscitation efforts on infants, and providing them with the training materials that they can then train other health workers, providing a local resource for this training.
Currently, in the Koins service area, there is limited healthcare available to local villagers. The NNR program will provide a much needed service to the local population, raising survival rates among infants.
Here are links to the work Deb Whipple and LDS Humanitarian are doing around the world:
http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=7cecc8fe9c88d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=64b8e46b6731b110VgnVCM100000176f620a____
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/church-works-to-save-infants-through-neonatal-resuscitation-training
http://www.mormonwiki.com/Humanitarian_Efforts
http://mormontimes.com/around_church/worldwide_church/?id=2893
