Partnership Provides Care for Vulnerable Children in Nairobi

27,000 Children to Receive Preventive Care at HOPE worldwide - Kenya Sites
September 19, 2008 – Rotarians for Fighting AIDS (RFFA) in partnership with HOPE worldwide - Kenya will be offering HIV testing and counseling in Kenya’s poorest neighborhoods as part of a volunteer medical mission, according to RFFA founder and chair Marion Bunch.

The mission, which runs Sept. 22 -30, will also focus on the health needs of children living in the Nairobi slums of Mukuru, Mathare and Korogocho, where HOPE worldwide – Kenya currently serves.  These communities suffer from extreme poverty and limited access to preventive health care.

About 70 volunteers from a dozen countries arrived in Kenya this week to provide preventive health care services to thousands of children in Nairobi, a city still recovering from the post-election violence of December and January.

The international team will be hosted by Kenyan Rotary club members, many of them members of RFFA, which has been especially active in Kenya, where it will function as the “mobilization partner” for the medical mission, handling logistics such as transportation, housing, food and security.

Each child will be screened to prioritize his or her most pressing needs – dental work, vision problems, malnutrition, injuries, infection, etc. – then sent to the appropriate specialty stations. The team is prepared to see as many as 3,000 patients a day, and the total value of services and supplies to be delivered is estimated at $1 million.

Local physicians and other Kenyan health care professionals will participate to ensure that patients will continue to receive appropriate care after the mission concludes. All unused supplies also will remain in Nairobi for that purpose.

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