End Malaria in Children of Rural communities, Kano

Dear Friends, Family and Supporters of Serendipity,

World Malaria Day came and it was a day of reflection of work we have thus far done in Madobi town. One reason was that we aimed to reach our mark of reducing the scourge of malaria prevalent on the children of Madobi and how effective our trainings have been on community thus we launched a project which spanned for one week "Precious Lives". It was a project within this project reviewing stories about the lives of three children who battled with malaria one of which we had earlier reported.

What is so unique about these children (Ibrahim, Maude and Zahrau - Not real names) was that at their young age they has dreams of becoming a doctor, Nurse and a pharmacist and were ready to fight the malaria that was ravaging their community through campaigning in their own little way after their lives had been saved from recurrent bouts of malaria. 

A total of over 70 mosquito nets were given within that period and now as most of the mothers now admit that sleeping under the nets with their children reduces mosquito bites.

A short survey during the review and distribution also brought to our attention a decrease in the rate of mothers taking their children to the clinic for malaria related illness. All the mothers who have previously received bed nets from us stated that they have not been to the hospital except for their normal weighing of their children.

Our goal of zero malaria infection in Madobi is hopefully showing its fruits as we encourage the mothers to continue to make sure that they and their children sleep under mosquito treated bed nets and with our three new ambassadors they help us to campaign against malaria.

We would appreciate your feedback however on work we have thus far done and hope you continue to support us in all possible ways.

Please feel free to contact us; like our facebook/serenhealthcare, follow us on twitter serendipityHea1, LinkedIn/SamirahFaruk or via our website on www.serendipityhealthcare.org.

Yours Faithfully,

Fatima Lawani

Head, Fundraising

Links:

• Celebrating Madobi children

Dear friends, family and supporters of Serendipity,

As part of our ongoing coverage to supply Insecticide Treated Nets to more wards in the community, we came across a case of a young boy who has been battling with fever for over two weeks before our arrival into the community; the strange thing about this whole scenario was that his parents believed he was possessed by evil spirits and hence refused to seek medication; upon our investigation with our outreach medical personnel, we found out that Ibrahim (not real name) had a temperature over 40 degrees and thus started convulsing hence his parents thinking he was possessed. Our timely intervention saved Ibrahim's life as it took a lot of convincing and assurance by our medical personnel and the local religious cleric to his father that he had high fever and thus needed medical attention at the primary healthcare centre.

And Ibrahim has this to say and I quote "I am happy that you good people came at the time you did to save my life and I thank you for that". 

We are glad that we strive to help save children from malaria in Madobi, Kano, Nigeria through advocacy, health awareness programmes and issuance of Insecticide Treated Nets to reduce its spread. This is not an easy issue for us as it still stands. We are still very short of funding to get the nets in whole sale and currently relying on retail prices which is not economical due to the low budget we have.

A net is now costing a little over $25 over the counter and with the current election atmosphere it is becoming difficult to obtain.

Nonetheless, we were able to distribute nets to young brides and boys in the community as most of them have been the highest cases of malaria incidence from the report we got from the healthcare centre but with this issuance we hope to see a reduction in outpatient cases of malaria.

We are still appealing for your continous support to help us in fighting malaria not only in Kano, Nigeria but the whole of Africa.

You can follow us on twitter @serendipityHea1, like our facebookpage/serenhealthcare or connect with us at LinkedIn/samirahfaruk.

Best,

Fatima Lawani,

Head, Fundraising

Links:

• New wards