LWALA COMMUNITY ALLIANCE LWALA, KENYA
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COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND CLINICAL CARE
Country: KENYA
Quick Overview WOPLAH seeks to build the capacity of the people of Lwala to advance their own comprehensive well-being. Their work is rooted in the following values: Honed Focus Holism Community Collaboration Cultural Sensitivity Accountability
! As part of East Africa, the territory of what is now Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African center of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD.! ! European and Arab presence in Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period, but European exploration of the interior began only in the 19th century. The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, known as the Kenya Colony by 1920.
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The independent Republic of Kenya was formed in 1964. It was ruled as a de-facto single-party state by the Kenya African National Union (KANU), a Kikuyu-Luo alliance led by Jomo Kenyatta during 1963 to 1978. Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, who ruled until 2002. Moi attempted to transform the de-facto single-party status of Kenya into a de-jure status during the 1980s, but with the end of the Cold War, the practices of political repression and torture which had been "overlooked" by the Western powers as necessary evils in the effort to contain communism were no longer tolerated. Moi came under pressure, notably by US
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ambassador Smith Hempstone, to restore a multi-party system, which he did by 1991. ! Moi won elections in 1992 and 1997, which were overshadowed by political killings on both sides. During the 1990s, evidence of Moi's involvement in human rights abuses and corruption (Goldenberg scandal) was uncovered. He was constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 election, which was won by Mwai Kibaki. Widely reported electoral fraud on Kibaki's side in the 2007 elections resulted in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis, which left 1,000 people dead and nearly 600,000 displaced. ! In 2008 Kibaki appointed 41 Ministers who voted to eliminate the position of Prime Minister, which reduced the powers of the President. Today Kibaki is still in power
Kenya Statistics Kenyan population: 41, 070,940 Over 9 Ethnic groups Rural homes: 78% Protestant: 45%, Catho lic: 33% Life expectancy: 59.48
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and has recently post-poned the 2012 elections until March 2013. ! Nyanza Province, Kenya, bordered by Lake Victoria and Tanzania, is one of Kenya's seven administrative provinces outside Nairobi. It is west of the Rift Valley and is inhabited mainly by the Luo people. The province capital is the city of Kisumu. In 1999 the total population was 4,392,196 inhabitants within an area of 16,162 km². ! Nyanza now has 19 districts, and Lwala is a small village in the Migori District. While fishing is the main economic activity throughout the province, there are also large sectors for agriculture, paper manufacturing, cement production, tea and
Health Statistics HIV rate: 15% in 2009 Infant mortality rate: 130 per 1,000 children 63% of population living on less than $1/day in 2009 coffee processing, and construction stone mining. Its close proximity to Lake Victoria, the largest lake on the African continent, makes Nyanza Province a common tourism location for aqua-culture, water sports, and more.
Organization: Lwala Community Alliance ! The Lwala Community Alliance is a non-profit health and development agency founded by Drs. Milton and Fred Ochieng’, who are natives of Lwala. Milton and Fred lost their parents to HIV while in college in the U.S. and took this as a call to action to provide access to primary care in their community.
ty, Migori coun In the rest of women give only 30% of pital. In birth in a hos of deliveries L wala, 89% pital. are in the hos
In 2010, the girl to boy ratio in Class 8 in Lwala was .58. Today it’s .87 During medical school at Vanderbilt, the brothers did all they could to raise the funds to start a clinic back at home. Their story is the subject of the documentary “Sons of Lwala” and has been featured on ABC World News and CNN. In April 2007, after 3 years of fundraising, the Lwala Community Health Center finally opened. Over time the program has become more multi-dimensional to include small scale micro-enterprise, public health outreach, water and sanitation, and education programming. In April 2011, construction on a new maternity and integrative care wing was completed, thereby tripling the space of the original clinic. As !!!!!!!! a result, the facility is now designated as the Lwala Community Hospital. The clinical staff at the hospital provide more than 15,000 patient visits each year, and they have over 1000 people enrolled in HIV care.
Programs: Clinical Care Lwala Community Alliance (LCA) runs a clinic that provides outpatient services, HIV care, child welfare, family planning, antenatal care, deliveries, and postnatal care. In total, it treats more than 17,000 patients per year.
Lwala Primar y School Maternal and Child Health LCA started maternal and child health programs when they began seeing patients in 2007, but at the time they could not foresee how important this aspect of their work would become. In Migori County, only 30% of women deliver with a skilled attendant, and less than 50% of babies receive v a c c i n a t i o n s . H o w e v e r, d u e t o t h e expansion of the maternity wing in 2011 and the growth of their community health worker training program and partnership with Umama Salama, LCA has seen antenatal care visits rise by 71%, deliveries with a skilled attendant have risen by 400%, and post-natal care visits have risen by 170%. HIV Care Given that Nyanza Province has the highest HIV prevalence in Kenya, and that Migori District has an even higher prevalence at 20%-24%, LCA’s HIV
programs are an essential component of their work. In 2009 they provided ARV Treatment to 400 people, which has grown to more than 1,000 and will need to continue growing to nearly 3,000 patients in the coming years. Not only are patients provided treatment, but they are also trained in new agricultural techniques or water, sanitation, and hygiene practices. LCA is also focused on HIV prevention through programs at the local secondary school and the hospital, as well as PMTCT and male circumcision efforts at the Lwala hospital. Public Health Outreach LCA focuses on public health outreach in many ways, one of which is the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) program, which trains local families in causes of water borne illness, techniques for water treatment, instruction for latrine building, and skills for community mobilization. Over 500 people have participated, leading to 300 new latrines in 2011 alone. Education For a variety of reasons, girls in Nyanza Province are far less likely to attend school than boys. By Class 8, nearly half of the girls in school typically drop out. To address this huge issue, LCA has started programs such as distribution of uniforms and sanitary towels to girls in upper primary school, clean drinking water to four primary schools and one secondary school, and 30 scholarships to secondary school. As a result of these programs, they have seen a tremendous increase in the number of girls attending Class 8.
Economic Development In order to truly provide holistic care to the citizens of Lwala, LCA has developed three microenterprise projects: 1. N e w V i s i o n s W o m e n ’ s S e w i n g Cooperative is a group of women tailors who produce reusable cloth menstrual pads and school uniforms, which are distributed to local primary school girls in order to keep them in school. Additionally, they have a line of cloth bags that are sold in the US through Thistle Farms. In 2011 they produced 2,750 menstrual pads, 650 uniforms, and over 2,200 bags for Thistle Farms bath and body products.
improved farming knowledge to the community. It includes development of a vegetable garden to supply vegetables to the hospital and the community. The training is done for groups, and some of the groups that have participated are the Umama Salama community health workers, the HIV support group, and a youth group raising money for school fees.
2. FURAHA Soap Making Cooperative is a group of WASH-trained individuals who make soap that is affordable to the community and is sold for washing clothes, washing dishes, and handwashing. It is marketed to local hotels, restaurants, and shops. 3. Agricultural Demonstration Garden is a program that was started with
Infrastructure On top of all the health programs that are supported by LCA, they have also made strides in strengthening the basic infrastructure of the Lwala community. For example, they have developed methods to capture more rain water and protect local springs. They have also brought an electricity grid to the community, allowing the health center to be open for nighttime emergencies. Lastly, LCA has worked with local officials in Migori County to improve an 8-mile stretch of dirt road leading to Lwala in order to provide easier access to the clinic for patients and other visitors.
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country resources
CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/ke.html International Human Development Indicators http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/ KEN.html Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/africa/kenya World Health Organization (WHO) http://www.who.int/countries/ken/en/ Politicizing the Fight Against Corruption, Article http://allafrica.com/stories/201205070669.html