Olago Clinic
Community Health
Since 2001, Olago rural health clinic has been successfully operating from Olago, a remote village in the “Middle Belt” of Nigeria in Makurdi State.
The clinic employs 3 staff undertaking health education, midwifery, treatment of minor ailments and a vaccination programme for the surrounding villages with vaccines provided by UNICEF.
Before the introduction of the vaccination program, around 10 children a year were dying from measles! Today, no children are lost to this entirely preventable disease. With your involvement, we can keep it that way. The clinic has also provided a safe haven in which mothers and children are cared for during pregnancy and delivery and we have seen the incidence of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity improve in the community.
It costs around £3000 per year to pay the wages of these amazing workers. Please consider supporting them by subscribing to Screen-Saviours.
Go ahead – be a change maker!
Rain-water harvesting
During a visit to the village in 2004, we were able to review the plans to provide the clinic with clean water – The clinic had been operational for 3 years with no water supply! Attempts to sink a well had been unsuccessful with water not being found despite drilling a bore hole to a depth of 70 metres on the recommendation of the local government water agency.
The only source of constant water was a diseased stream used by the village for swimming, washing and drinking! As we returned from the river into the village, I was struck by the untapped potential of collecting water during the rainy season from the clinic roof. I quickly did some calculations and discovered that around 400,000 litres of rain fell on the roof during the year!
The local leaders enthusiastically received our ideas and on my return to the UK I was able to research the subject some more. I learnt about “Rain Water Harvesting” and was able to send resources to the community. Within 6 months they had built a system that provides year round clean water for the clinic and some of the village!
In 2006, Richard came across the amazing SODIS water cleansing method whilst researching on the BBC website for his trip that year. In February 2007, Dr Emmanuel Abu of Southampton University visited the village and undertook a rigorous field test to prove the ‘too good to be true results’! He demonstrated the river water is infected and the water disinfected using the SODIS is clean! The plan is to extend the provision of clean water to every household in the village using this virtually free method.
For more details, please contact us.
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