Jul 16, 2010
Posted by Caitlin Cohen
The other evening I walked through the
Sourakabougou market and soccer field towards
the bright red cross on a bright pink clinic,
the ASACOMSISOU. After years of shuffling
paper, meeting with bureaucrats, getting
architects’ briefs, discussing the price of
sand (this country is made of sand, it has a
price?) it is easy to lose sight of the product
of your endeavors. The clinic is a humble
addition to the massive neighborhood, but it
was spectacular to see its pink walls as the
backdrop of the comings and goings from school,
market, and the wide-open public plaza.
Mr Traore, our nurse on weekend duty, greeted
me, showing me proudly his register of
patients, the room for hospitalized patients,
the pharmacy, the maternity, and consultation
rooms. He flipped through a paper copy of the
children who are in the Action for Health
program, and turned on the computer to call up
their records in PatientView. It was a calm
Saturday evening, one laboring mother waited
remarkably silently for contractions to come
faster, while the matron (midwife) bustled
about preparing the birthing room.
It is spectacular to see how far we have come
in the 10 months since I have been here. And
exciting, too, to see the projects that are
beginning now. The community health workers
are learning to use their phone health tracking
systems with great aplomb, even the older women
have had their teenage sons teach them how.
Transforming Trash is trying some of our first
prototypes for income-generating trash melting
in Mali this summer.
But our work is far from done. The clinic
still needs nurturing itself as it grows to
serve a larger population and be wholly
financially independent. Action for Health
needs many more enrollees before we start to
see major changes in the overall health of the
community. It has been exciting to get the
snap-shot version of the project “before” and
“after”… the growth seems almost exceptional.
But I look forward to coming back next year for
the next snapshot and finding our new pink
clinic settled into the brown hillside, and
seeing our seedling turn into a tree.
