The Gondama Birth Waiting Home Project, proposed by RHCI, will move forward with the help of a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Pictured above is RHCI’s Sierra Leone Director, Manley Jongopie, signing the forms on October 24, with the US Embassy official on the left. The amount of the grant is $6050.
The idea for the project began in January 2019 when Rev. Dr. Neil Craigan, Board member of RHCI in Minnesota, visited the Gondama Community Health Center (CHC) with motorbike rider Joseph Sogbandi. Meeting with the health center staff, they discovered the urgent need to re-open the Birth Waiting Home that previously had been run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) until 2014, the year that MSF closed it due to the Ebola outbreak.
Gondama is located about 12 miles from Tikonko Town and is within the Tikonko Chiefdom. The Gondama CHC serves an area of approximately 8000 people, including many small villages and has limited resources.
The Birth Waiting Home project includes rehabilitation of the abandoned building, plus rebuilding the latrine and kitchen. RHCI, in collaboration with the staff at the Gondama CHC, will operate the Birth Waiting Home, using the operational model of the successful Mbao-mi Mothers’ Home in Tikonko. Over 350 pregnant and post-partum women and babies have stayed at Mbao-mi without any maternal deaths.
RHCI is also partnering with the Gondama CHC to operate its Outreach Motorbike Clinic to the four villages of Gandohun, Konta, Gawulahun and Margbema. The Gondama Birth Waiting Home Project and the Gondama Outreach Motorbike Clinic are a part of RHCI’s “Expanding Our Roots” plan to serve more people in the Tikonko Chiefdom of rural Sierra Leone.
US Embassy in Sierra Leone
Pictured above: Embassy Staff, Manley Jongopie (4th from right) and other recipients of Embassy Grants
