MenelikPartnership - Menelik's Children

The plight of children in orphanages moves many of us. The needs are many.

Medical Clinic Overview

MenelikPartnership has just appointed two doctors from the Eastern part of Congo with experience working of working with NGO in the troubled region of eastern Congo. They will be joined by a team or nurses to provide our children with any basic care that they may require. As many of the children have on-going illnesses it is vital that they are monitored regularly for any recurring problems.

The clinic we want to set up will predominantly be used to treat the children living at the orphanage, due to the limited number of drugs that we could afford to stock. However, once established, it is our intention to provide some basic healthcare for those in the local community, for free when possible, or at a reduced rate. We hope to extend the scope of the clinic this summer 2012 with the help of our volunteers from the DRC, the UK and beyond, to offer care to more people in the local area.

Since 2008 MenelikPartnership has run several temporary community medical camps, treating hundreds of people in deprived areas of Kinshasa. Many of these would not have been possible without the support of our UK donors who through their donations have provided those in the local area with invaluable diagnoses and treatment.

Menelik's Children

Although there are many illnesses in the orphanage that are treatable, the medical team feels it is most important to offer medical services to educate and prevent sickness where possible.

We acknowledge that we will be unable to cure all the problems at the orphanage or in the community therefore, your donations (money) will also be spent on community health seminars, along with a selected number of treatments in order to best utilise our recourses. Many complaints which can be treated, such as worms, are so prevalent in these deprived areas that although medication will be briefly successful it needs to be used at regular intervals, which will prove very challenging as far as our financial situation is concerned.

Until we are better equipped to provide longer term solutions to problems, we will only be able to cater (full medical care) to children living in our orphanage. With more regular funding support and physical donations we hope to open up our scope of treatment. For any information about our clinic and future plans please feel free to contact us at:

theodore.menelik@menelikpartnership.org or

sally.nott@menelikpartnership.org

MENELIK CLINIC - Need for short and long term volunteer medical personnel, including physicians and administrators, for an orphanage in Kinshasa. You can be part of starting a clinic that will help the desperately poor. You will also help serve and treat people on site in all sorts of illnesses including leprosy and AIDS. Non-medical short term teams are also welcome to help in the orphanage.

Our orphanage: we have roughly 120 children whose age varies in the range from 10 months to 22 years but the number does fluctuate a lot. We estimate that before the end of this year we may have well over 200.

Health of children: 65% of children have very serious illnesses, although these are not necessarily life threatening, if not taken care of soon may result in death for the weaker one in the first instance and the others soon after.

What do they suffer from:

· Lack of protein

· Malnutrition, which is generally the base of other infectious diseases

· Poor housing conditions

· Poor hygiene and sanitation

· Mental and emotional problem

We have appoint two local doctors who will work for us for the next two years but require a number of urgent medical devices which we hope you could help us obtain, and they are:

baby weighs device
scale for adults & children over 5 years
tapes
bandages
thermometers
stethoscopes
examination beds X 3
Gloves
Bed shits

Stationery requirements:

Patient register
Records keeps
Monitoring form
A4 paper
Pens and pencils
Laptops
Routers

Pharmaceutical needs (including some emergency medicines):

Antitussives
Antipyretics
Quinine liquid
Coughing syrups (adults and children)
Antibiotics (oral and non)
Vitamin C
Multivitamin
Worming medicines
Calpols
Aspirin
Paracetamol

Type of volunteer required (students and/or professional):

Nutritionist dieticians
Health and hygiene educators
Psychologists
Physicians
Dentists
Paediatricians

Please note: we also will need volunteers to help develop the fun side for these children i.e. sports, education, and other such like activities.

Our doctors will be visiting the orphanage/clinic twice a week and will be there to assist all volunteer as and when required.

What next?

We are about to start interviewing for this project and the interview dates can be found on this linkhttp://www.doodle.com/rmvays9xgpkkqw6w, please add your name to the time that suits you most.

The interviews location address is:

MenelikEducation Ltd

c/o The Humanitarian Centre

Gresham Road

Cambridge

CB1 2ES

If this is not what you would like to do, we offer other types of volunteering schemes; please visit our website for more info. We have also started interviewing, so get in touch with us ASAP if you want to be part of this summer trip.

If in doubt please call me on 07842 177 344 or email me at theodore.menelik@menelikpartnership.org