MCAI volunteer senior doctors based at Brikama Hospital in The Gambia  are providing training in Comprehensive Emergency Maternity and Newborn Infant Care  to Gambian doctors and midwives. They are also strengthening the hospital system by working with the Ministry of Health to ensure that essential staff, equipment, medicines and surgical supplies are constantly available. Currently because of extreme poverty in The Gambia, MCAI has to supplement the provision of vital supplies to keep the maternity unit running safely.

The proceeds of this appeal will provide essential equipment, medicines and surgical supplies directly to Brikama hospital.

 

Brikama maternity unit is busy, with around twenty babies born each day or 6500 each year.  MCAI have been working to improve services here for several years including funding a 10 bedded labour ward with support of Soroptomists International.  Many local women choose to give birth in the hospital, encouraged by community health programmes run jointly by the Reproductive and Child Health Department of the Gambian Ministry of Health and MCAI.  Women with serious complications were transferred to the capital Banjul, a 40 minute drive away.  In some cases, this is just too long.  The next stage in improving maternity services in Brikama is to upgrade the hospital to provide comprehensive emergency obstetric care, long term.  This means that women who have complications during childbirth have access to emergency medication, blood transfusion and surgery such as caesarean section on site.

In August 2014, MCAI were asked by the Ministry of Health to begin training junior doctors and midwives in advanced obstetrics at Brikama.  Senior international obstetricians volunteered and are in post.  The operating theatre is open and life-saving procedures are performed every day.  Our Diploma in Advance Obstetrics is up and running with two trainees.  Our long term aim is that the maternity service will be delivered by local staff who have been trained here.

In the short term, we are struggling because of National stock shortages in essential drugs such as antibiotics and pain killers, medical and surgical supplies and basic equipment.  We source as much as we can in country and re-sterilise where possible but some equipment such as stitches and catheters really are single use.

We are in close contact with the Ministry of Health to find a permanent solution, but are in desperate need of a reliable supply now.

Please support our exciting, essential work.  All the money donated will be used to provide medicine and equipment to treat women in Brikama Hospital.

£2 provides antibiotics and painkillers for a woman at the time of Caesarean section

£5 provides sutures to repair perineal tears for 20 women

£50 provides enough urinary catheters or intravenous cannula for the unit for one month