Restoring Healthcare to Women and Girls in Liberia

Meet Lucy, the newest HWHL construction team member.  She is the breadwinner for her family, a mother to seven children.  Lucy pursued construction training in her home community in the North, and is one of only a handful of women trained for this type of work. Lucy's husband, like so many in Liberia, has not been able to find a job. She and her family recently moved to Kakata after she heard about our Medical Center construction project. Having her on our team serves as a great example of what is possible for the other women in our community. The foundation is now finished.  For the next two months we are working to raise the roof. 

Chris and her team are still seeing patients in the temporary space constructed in the yard of Dr. Chris’ home or out in the 34 communities in Margibi County that surround Kakata. During the ebola crisis we remained focused on our mission. We continued to take care of the people in Margibi County, but we also completely reassessed our priorities and revalidated our longer term goals, on being ready for what comes after - when foreign resources pull out, when markets and schools reopen, when goods begin to flow through the community, when people focus on living and working again. Ebola revealed that we needed to be much more self-reliant and that we needed to dramatically accelerate completion of our medical facility already under construction. Essentially we are working to compress our 10 year plan into 6 1/2 years.

We continue to be very concerned about the impact on the economy. When ebola hit the country, the toll was immediate.  A recent World Bank report said that "nearly half of the working population of Liberia is no longer working since the crisis began." Wealthy Liberians with dual citizenship and foreign nationals fled the country, taking their purchasing power with them. When the state of emergency was declared, the government closed. Restaurants and bars had to close at 6 pm. Schools closed, gatherings were prohibited. People avoided public places and public transportation. Fearing infection, people stopped visiting hairdressers and clothing shops. Kakata, being centrally located, lies at a crossroads between the capital and distant rural, farming communities, 43 miles northwest of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.  It is a place of commerce, markets and distribution centers, all shutdown. The new crops didn't get planted. Mining companies slowed or stopped operations, and suppliers across the board lost their incomes. Small businesses around the country went out of business.  Hundreds of thousands of people are still out of work. Tax revenues are down significantly and funds were expended on ebola, not development. Liberia was one of the fastest growing economies in the world last year, but recent projections show that the country’s growth could be going backwards in 2015. It is a huge setback and will take time for the economy to recover.  

During the crisis many children were put to work since there was no school. Families are still dependent on their income, desperate for money from every source. Many schools were used to quarantine potential ebola patients. Now that the schools have reopened, many parents are still reluctant to send their children there. We are working to catch up on deworming, nutrition, sanitation, and vaccination programs, severely affected by the school closings.  We are also initiating a dedicated community effort to get all children back in school.  Ten new Community Health Workers are being trained to help with these programs. Your support with directly assist these efforts.  

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