Money for Medicine

Hey everyone! We are currently volunteering in the Senya Beraku, Ghana health clinic. We are also staying in Senya Beraku where they have no plumbing whatsoever and frequent power outages. During our time here, we have found that some of the most simple tasks are extremely difficult or impossible due to lack of supplies and funds.

Think about what you worry about in a day. At home we worry about rushing to work, making car payments or about when the next assignment is due. All of it is important.

Now imagine for a minute that you have to worry about your child, wife, husband or best friend dying from a preventable and treatable disease like malaria. Imagine that you don't have the money for treatment or to be seen by a health care worker. That is 100% the sad reality here and not just a statistic. We see this every day.

By the time that you finish reading this post, two children will have died from malaria. That is one child every minute. Treatment is $20. That's less than three drinks at a bar! What is really great, is the fact that we are here to personally pick up the supplies in a bigger city about two hours away and test and treat these people ourselves!

Please consider this when you're thinking about donating. $300 will give us the funds to test and treat 250 people in Senya. This outreach that we are organizing is an all day event and is open to the entire community. We have been told that thousands will attend by those who have assisted with previous outreach clinics. The more funds we raise, the more people we can test and treat.

On top of that we hope to insure at least 200 people in Senya. One full year of health insurance for anyone under 18 is $1.50. For one entire year! That's less than what we spend on coffee each morning. Insurance for anyone over 18 is $7.50. Again, for one year! That's it.

If we do really well with this fundraiser we hope to buy EXTREMELY needed basic health equipment. The clinic where we are working has unreliable electricity and NO running water. You guys! No running water in a health clinic?! Think about how that decreases the ability to provide safe and sanitary health care. While we would love to give them everything we have at home (which we are constantly reminded here, is so much), we cannot.

We can however help with the basics. We lost a three year old boy today who could have been easily treated and saved with the basic equipment we are trying to fund and buy.