URGENT NECESSITIES
The recent unrest in Côte d'Ivoire
While operating revenues now cover the cost of providing services, as well underwriting the free care we deliver on a daily basis, those revenues cannot be stretched far enough to cover the cost of these renovations.
Right now, our most immediate needs are to repair the damage to our facility, to re-build our birthing room and operating suite, to up-grade equipment and to add more consultation rooms and beds.
Birthing Rooms: $90,000
When attempting to establish a community health center as a highly-valued community service, one of the best mechanisms available is to provide quality pre-natal and birthing care. Once a new mother has given birth at a particular facility, she develops a strong affinity for that facility leading to wider utilization of the services.
This is the cost for a modern, full-fledged two-room birthing suite with a complete patient monitoring system, full-fledged birthing beds, and all of the ancillary equipment required to ensure a safe and pleasurable birthing experience. This cost includes $30,000 toward the construction of a three-room annex to house the birthing center, plus two fully-equipped birthing rooms.
Surgical Suite: $165,000
We cannot open our Birthing Rooms until we have a functioning Surgical Suite to handle birth emergencies requiring immediate intervention. Additionally, it would enhance the scope and extent of the services Centre de Santé Nimatoullah can provide to the community.
Constructing a fully-equipped surgical suite in a developing country requires constant awareness of the difficulty encountered with equipment maintenance and repair issues. The cost of equipping a complete surgical suite in the United States
LONG TERM NEEDS
The Centre de Sante has plans that extend several years into the future. We have a "shopping list" of improvements we would like to add onto our existing programs, things that make sense for us to do....but require additional financial support.
Our Wish List: Plans for Future Growth
The future never waits for us to catch up...and that's why we're trying to anticipate the Abidjan Center
The problem with "wish-lists" is that the day-to-day grind of keeping your basic services funded undermines efforts to raise development funds need to promote growth. After the recent unrest, we are back on track in Abidjan
Emergency Ambulance: $50,000
In community-based medicine, you always hope for the best….and plan for the worst. We need a fully-equipped ambulance to transport critically-ill patient to primary care hospitals in our service area, replacing the our old vehicle (a 4 X 4 jeep) that was commandeered during the recent unrest. A brand-new, fully-equipped ambulance retails from $70,000 to $150,000. A dependable used ambulance sells for $25,000-$50,000, and so we have set our sites upon one, good-quality, fully-equipped trauma unit with pulmonary-cardiac capabilities.
Ambulatory Transporters: $30,000 X 2 = $60,000
We need two 14-passenger vans, each equipped with a chair ramp to facilitate the delivery of wheel-chair patients to the health center. The 14-passenger vans have room for two wheelchairs and two rows of seating, making this an ideal choice for us.
BIG DREAMS: THE MOBILE CLINIC PROJECT
There's no point in dreaming if you only dream small....so this is our big dream, a fully-equipped mobile clinic that we can use to bring the care they need to the people who need it wherever they are. We could greatly expand our community outreach with a van to go to outlying communities and villages.
In Abidjan
A mobile clinic like the one pictured above saves lives by bringing services out of the institutions down to the streets and into rural communities where they are needed most. This is indeed a big dream: a fully equipped mobile clinic could cost as much as $250,000, but the lives it might save are truly priceless.
