T.RES Worldwide initiatives

L.V.I.A. initiative to benefit the Tuareg population.

The objective of L.V.I.A. – Association of International Volunteers and Cooperation – is to better the general level of health care, especially for those who are not able to benefit from existing health care systems, which is to say, the nomad population of the Tuareg in the town of Téméra in the province of Bourem (Gao Region – Mali). A mobile health unit has been actuated that travels by pirogue. This unit is connected with the Primary Health Care Center and serves more than 15,000 people. An intervention system has been developed that is capable of meeting the needs of the local populations in the following areas: primary care (quality, proximity, appropriate for the needs) community policies (level and methods of diffusing information, mobilization of representatives and institutional partners; etc.), management of most needy.

www.lvia.it

 

April 2008 Update

The L.V.I.A. – [Voluntary and International Cooperation Association] project to help the Tuareg populations has give its results and now it has entered its final stages.

“The project to support the healthcare system in the nomadic area of Northern Mali has now entered its final stages. These last few months are being spent consolidating and maintaining the results achieved in these three years so that institutions and local communities can proceed autonomously with the activities undertaken, with the support of the LVIA.

Radio Jongoy, the community radio in Témera is now a point of reference for the whole area; listeners include different nomadic groups and it gives regular bulletins to the local population about when and where to find the mobile team, which either goes out along the river on a pinasse or travels to the more remote inland areas in a 4WD ambulance.

Radio has also become a means of fundamental importance for LVIA workers and community health association (ASACO) volunteers to carry out their awareness-raising and prevention campaigns concerning health, since meetings with the local populations are always preceded and followed up by special radio broadcasts that reinforce the effectiveness of the message.

As well as continuing activities at ground level and those focusing on the use of community radio, this last year has also seen efforts being made to increase the skills of local healthcare staff (especially lab technicians and traditional midwives) and of the technicians who have the task of running the community radio, given that retraining local human resources is also a fundamental step in a development policy where the timeframe is not just limited to the actual duration of the project.

In the last few months, the supply of technical equipment to the Community Health Centre in Témera has also been completed, with the purchase of medical equipment and further stocks of medicines. This centre is the support and base for any mobile healthcare strategy within the area as well as the first point of reference whenever a patient cannot be treated by the mobile team on the ground.

From mid-April, with the end of the project, local authorities will be managing all resources, including finances.

The LVIA will continue to offer outside technical support to ensure the effectiveness of the measures put in place to guarantee a sustainable project as well as to foster the spread of similar initiatives to the one in Témera to other areas in the region, transforming this pilot project into an example to be followed.”

 

Gao (northern Mali), July 2007

The project has reached the end of its second year.  The investment stage has been completed and the various training cycles for the medical staff hired for the mobile team are drawing to a close.  Since February 2006, the hospital pirogue that regularly sounds the river Niger along the section with which the project is concerned has become a real point of healthcare reference for the local nomadic communities (which are often found alongside the river in search of water), as well as for the settled communities that have inhabited the banks of the river for hundreds of years.  The mobile team is comprised of a doctor, a nurse, two medical assistants, a matron and a person to man the pirogue.  It is equipped to carry medicines - preserving the cold chain - a portable ecograph, a field testing kit and everything else required to provide initial healthcare for the sick.  The staff of the mobile team, with the help of the activity organisers of the LVIA (Lay Volunteers International Association), also has the task of raising awareness within populations with regard to the prevention of disease, the importance of immunisation, the fight against AIDS, the sidetracking of social diseases such as vaginal fistulas (which afflict a large number of women in north Mali), the need for prenatal examinations, and the organisation of a local healthcare system.  The project is coordinated by the healthcare team of the LVIA, which is based in Gao (chief town of the region of the same name).