Water and Sanitation,
Health and Medical Care
Water
Clean water, adequate sanitation and hygiene education are essential to the children’s survival.
Without it the children will get diarrhoea and waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid. Diarrhoea is the third most common preventable death in the Kenya.
Since 2011 when Change a Chapter started we have a new access route that brings clean water into the school.
Piped clean water has a significant affect on preventing sickness in the children.
At times, we have discovered the area water board is not totally reliable in supply of pumped water. There are conservation periods when water supply is limited through the secondary pipes off the mains. This may be at antisocial hours such as 2am-4am.
When this occurs either a resident member of staff at the school site will fill buckets in the middle of the night or the children will walk and collect water from the one standpipe and bring it to school at break times.
Most children do not have running water at home and routinely some of the day will always involve collecting water.
Purified water costs and water is scarce in Kenya, therefore it does need to be preserved. Water conservation is taught at school.
One months clean water to the school = £50
Clean water saves lives.
Only one family who attends school has a flushing toilet. The majority of children and their families will either use an outdoor pit latrine or just go to the toilet in the bush somewhere.
The toilets at school are currently basic squat toilets. There are three of these for pupils and staff.
With a yearly lick of paint the school toilets (if the imagination is used) improve somewhat but, to be frank they are unpleasant.
Change a Chapter is keen to build a new toilet block and we would like to install two shower washing cubicles for the children to use too.
To date 60% of the amount required for a new purpose built toilet block for the school has been raised
£250 = One toilet cubicle with a pedestal toilet that flushes.
Perhaps you would twin your toilet at work, school, or church with one of the Change a Chapter toilets?
You can envisage what a change of chapter this would be.
Female hygiene and menstruation
To be a girl living in Kenya, with no running water and no money to purchase sanitary pads is grim. A pad is a luxury and a pair of pants helps prevent opportunist sexual abuse in all age girls.
Adolescent girls will frequently miss school during their periods.
The girls need provision of pants and pads. Change a Chapter has to date provided more than 20 packs of pants for all the mentruating girls at school.
Younger girls have been given new pants too.
No pack of pants is ever wasted.
Along with helping provide pants and pads for the girls at school we have joined forces with a community based organisation called Ebenezer who are working in a village called Vipingo.
We help to provide pants and pads for girls there too.
Packs of pants similar to those bought in the Western world are not available in Kenya. Change a Chapter takes packs of pants out yearly and also collects financial donations to purchase more pants in Kenya.
£5 = one 5 pair pack of pants and one pack of pads
Girls are so desperate for pads and pants they will sell their bodies during their non mentrual times to be able to afford them.
We together can help change a chapter for these struggling teenagers.
£5 will change a chapter to give teenage girls a happier story.
Health and Medical Care
Children get sick. They can get very sick in Kenya.
As well as all the conditions a child is suceptible to in the Western world, there are also many tropical diseases that occur and the health and medical consequences of living in extreme poverty are unlimited.
Medical consultations and medical treatment costs. It is not free.
The average family or guardian has no means to pay for treatment which is why so many children and adults die unnecessarily.
If a child attends school and is unwell Change a Chapter
want to be able to help them.
In the local area there is a medical clinic the children can be taken to.
A clinical medical officer (not a qualified doctor) can do basic prescribing and treatment. The nearest government hospital is 30 miles away and it is extremely limited in its resources.
Change a Chapter has been fortunate to meet and have access to the medical expertise of a European trained Kenya Doctor who runs a private hospital 5 miles away.
He and his colleagues have helped Change a Chapter when a more serious medical condition has arisen in one of the children.
To date we have changed a chapter in the life of a child with chronic infected eczema, a poorly controlled asthmatic, children with ringworm, children with jiggers and children with malaria. There have been a couple of broken arms too!
Common medical problems
Malaria
Kenya is in the tropics and serious tropical diseases like malaria occur.
Malaria kills but an insecticide treated net saves a life.
£5 = one net, not a casket
If Change a Chapter visit where a child from school stays and the child does not have a mosquito net we must buy them one.
£5 saves lives.
Jiggers
The jigger is the name given to a sand flea. The female jigger will embed itself in the feet of barefooted children.
The sores can become infected and this is very painful and itchy. It can be so bad that a child is unable to walk.Jigger prevention is best.
Prevention is easier than medical treatment.
(Treatment involves extracting the insect and then soaking the feet in Dettol or a natural neem oil product called Jigtex. However the feet need soaking in a clean disinfected solution for fifteen minutes daily for two weeks to kill the bugs.)
A robust pair of shoes can be bought for as little as £5. Combining shoes and washing feet in clean water, prevents jiggers.
It’s spread is amplified because of the warm moist tropical enviroment and the children touch each other when they are playing.
Worms
Worm infection adversely affects children’s nutrition, health and educational attainment.
Soil-transmitted worm infections are common due to the lack of access to the basics of clean water and sanitation.
(The worms are transmitted by eggs present in human faeces which in turn contaminate soil in areas where sanitation is poor.)
Change a Chapter would ideally like to deworm all the children who come our way.