Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

Present

Pam Powell, Peter Smith, Peter Sampson (Chair), Melrose East, Robyn Phillips, Biku Ghosh, Dave Williams, Sally Venn, Sandy Holt-Wilson, Peter Dale, Lynn McDonnell, Jill Curtis, Iestyn Harrigan

Apologies

Jane Hervé, Michelle Hall.

Minutes of last meeting

The minutes of the last meeting were agreed as an accurate record.

Peter Sampson thanked Melrose for her efforts in doing the minutes. This job is now being taken over by Pam. This will give Melrose more time for other link activities.

Matters arising

Charitable Status: The agreed constitution has been signed by the designated trustees, Peter, Biku, Wendy and Robyn. It has now been passed to Claire to sign. The application can then be sent for approval. There has been some problem about opening a bank account, but this will be resolved when the application is approved and finalised.

Funding – there were two types of funding on offer:

• WAG Funding (NHS Division): Funding of up to £50,000 was available for links between services in Wales and health services in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the South of the World. A submission for £22,750 had been put forward for the Exemplar Health Centre Project. We have now heard that our application was not successful. Robyn wrote to Mary Gilbert to ask what criteria we did not fulfil. Although she had a reply, it did not answer her question.
• Wales for Africa Grant Scheme 2009/10: Our funding application for evaluating the benefits of links to employees, the workplace and Wales was turned down, but we have been awarded £5,000 to be spent by March 31st, and another £8,000 to be spent over the next twelve months.

Charitable funds:  Peter Sampson has made enquiries to see whether the Trust will award some charitable funds to the link, but this has been turned down at this stage. It was felt that if we can demonstrate the benefit to the trust, staff and patients, they may be more willing to support us.

Midwifery Workshop:  Melrose is organising a Midwifery Training in Africa Workshop for midwives/nurses involved in trying to reduce maternal and child mortality in Africa. It will focus on sharing experiences and explore the benefits to themselves, their workplace and to Wales. It will take place on Tuesday 9th June at Nevill Hall Hospital. It is hoped that that this may result in increased publicity and funding.

Orphans: We have received letters from both the Wondo Genet and Yirga Cheffe community groups, seeking help to support the orphans. Yirga Cheffe alone, has over 200 orphans needing support. At present the churches and schools try to help them. The Muslim church gives support and tries to allocate the orphans to families. They need money to provide clothes, food, shelter and education. Lynn has been making enquiries as to how to raise funds. She suggested that an initial fund of £5,000 as a starting point was needed. One idea was to sponsor a child for £1 per week with six- monthly emails to update on progress, also pay-roll giving, or one-off donations. She also suggested we approached businesses i.e. Psychology companies, and businesses involved with children, and ask for donations of £500. Questions were asked about how much money was needed to support an orphan and Biku agreed to make enquiries as to the numbers needing support, and the cost per child. We will then discuss this again at the next meeting. We felt we that we need to know the facts before we ask for donations.

Wales for Africa Health Links Conference: This will be the 3rd annual conference and Sally Venn spoke about this event, and urged us to attend. It will focus on healthy communities and look at how we can interact with communities here, and in Africa, to raise the profile of link activities. There will be separate stands for each link. Our link will do a session on increasing community confidence in health centres, which will include Robyn’s evaluation and monitoring of the health centres. It takes place on Wednesday 1st July at the All Nations Centre, Sachville Avenue, Cardiff. It will be necessary to register.

Wales for Africa annual Health Links report: This will be released by the Health Minister at a meeting on 9th June at 6pm in The Senned Building.

Reports from visit March 2009

Robyn: Robyn continued the monitoring and evaluation of the three Exemplar Health Centres, and helped Melrose with the midwifery training. It was found that some midwifes qualify with no delivery experience. Since a minimum number of deliveries should be performed, this fact will be brought to the attention of the regional health officers. In Alaba and Wondo Genet there had been a change of staff, but the replacements were very motivated and continuity has been maintained. The staffs from all three health centres attended the motorbike ambulance presentation at Wondo Genet and were able to meet each one another.

Melrose: Melrose set up a designated neonatal resuscitation area in each health centre by using a changing mat, towels, knitted hats, neonatal resuscitation bags, posters of techniques etc. She also gave more training including kangaroo baby care (skin to skin contact) and use of pantograph to assess progress of labour. More patients in labour were present this time.

An audit of the previous training was done. Melrose is hoping to write a paper for publication. Melrose and Robyn attended the motorbike ambulance presentation.

Dave and Iestyn: They spent three days setting up a microbiology laboratory in Awassa Referral Hospital. This is a long term project. There were some problems with equipment and power supply but these were resolved. They did manage to grow some bacteria for demonstration. They also visited Alaba and Wondo Genet where they did some repairs and maintenance to the microscopes.

Biku: Biku reported that all three health centres say that standards have improved. Things brought to their attention on previous visits had been put right. Each health centre attended the motor bike ambulance presentation and shared their experiences and friendships. Our partners from the health centres and hospital, and the regional health bureau, attended the THET Conference in Addis Ababa the week prior to the visit. All present were very impressed by our link and our partners were very proud to be our representatives.

• Yirga Cheffe: Here there was a good relationship between the health centre and the community. £1,000 was given to the Church from the Holy Trinity Church and £1,070 to the schools, from the Bryn y Cwm Community Link. There was a meeting which representatives of the schools, health centre and churches attended. Letters were also exchanged. The health centre was very busy and there was excellent staff moral. There were some problems with telephone service with relation to the motorbike ambulance, but these have been resolved by Dr. Aberra. They no longer have an admissions ward as this is now being used as a feeding station for under-nourished children.
• Alaba: This health centre was very busy. During the visit the laboratory did 110 malaria slides of which 90 were positive. The motorbike ambulance has been used a lot. The new microscope donated last time has unfortunately been stolen. Dave and Iestyn managed to repair the old microscope.
• Wondo Genet: Here there is a very good rapport between the staff. The donation of the motorbike ambulance was very well received. There are plans to upgrade this to a hospital.
• Awassa Referral Hospital.  This was very dirty with lots of blocked sinks. At a meeting with Dr Yifru it was pointed out that there was no point in doing microbiology testing until this was rectified. After this they started cleaning. They are starting to do an MSC course for non-doctors at Awassa University. This will include emergency surgery, anaesthetics and midwifery. It will be a 3 year course. Misganaw has gone to Addis to do an MSC in Haematology. Metasabia is now the Assistant link co-ordinator to Dr. Aberra.

Link activities in 2009/2010

Biku talked about the link activities over the past ten years. This included training,         teaching, equipment, visits, and supporting Dr Aberra during his one year’s training.

The plans for this year are –

• Melrose will lead the midwifery training of thirty midwives per year.
• Robyn will continue her monitoring and evaluation of the health centres.
• A laboratory workshop will not be needed this year, although there will be a re-visit to see how the microbiology and histology laboratories at Awassa are progressing. Also we will give continuing support to the three health centres with training and equipment.
• We will do training for the health officers this year and set up a skills workshop.
• We will support the new MSC course at Awassa.
• We will assess the usage of the motorbike ambulances.
• Dr Aberra wants us to evaluate our three health centres and compare to others not involved in a health link. We can then use our health findings as evidence so that funders will realise the benefits that such links bring.
• Mothers of Africa also want to come this year to give more training for the nurse anaesthetists.
• We aim to get more publicity for the health link. This will be achieved by doing the midwifery workshop, and publishing the benefits of linking with Africa, in the Midwifery Journal. It will also highlight the benefits achieved by our training, which have led to fewer episiotomies being performed.
• We will connect with other health links, to improve maternal health, and work together.

Date of next meeting: Next meeting will be held on Thursday June 18th in the Education Centre, Nevill Hall Hospital at 5:15 pm.