Plan Guinea Bissau Annual Progress Report 2010

A YEAR IN

GUINEABISSAU

SUMMARY REPORT

2010 A student presents as part of a project where students governed their school

3

GOOD REASONS

OUR PRIORITIES

why Plan works in Guinea-Bissau

in Guinea- Bissau

• Half of the population do not have clean drinking water, and three quarters do not have adequate sanitation

• Helping children to grow up healthy and promoting safe motherhood

• Only half of children go to primary school

• Improving the quality of primary education and supporting more children to stay in school, especially girls

• Abuses such as child labour, early marriage and female genital cutting are common

• Providing clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, and promoting good hygiene • Helping to create an environment where children’s rights are respected and where they can take part in decisions that affect their lives, and fighting abuse and exploitation

‘Cholera is a deadly yet easily preventable disease’

A family gathers water from their community well

Guinea-Bissau Facts Population: 1.5 million Capital: Bissau Languages: Portuguese

(official). Crioulo and African languages are widely spoken Climate: Guinea-Bissau is warm all year around and there is little temperature fluctuation; it averages 26.3°C. The average rainfall for Bissau is 2024 mm although this is almost entirely accounted for during the rainy season which falls between June and September/October.

From December through April, the country experiences drought.

GAM BI A

Economy: More than two-thirds

of Guinea-Bissau’s population lives below the poverty line.

The economy depends mainly on agriculture: fish, cashew nuts and ground nuts are its major exports. A long period of political instability has resulted in depressed economic activity, deteriorating GUINEA-BISSAUsocial conditions, and increased macro-economic imbalances. Guinea-Bissau has started to show some economic advances in the last two years, after a pact of stability was signed by the main political parties of the country, leading to an IMF-backed structural reform program.

SE N EG A L

Varela

Ingoré Gabu

Piche

Bafata

Bissau

Béli

GUI N EA

GUINEA-BISSAU Country Office Program Units

Focus on: growing up healthy

Malaria, acute respiratory disease and malnutrition are major killers of children in Guinea-Bissau. Plan works to change this by repairing health centres and training community health workers and midwives.

We supply medicines, mosquito nets and equipment, and carry out immunisation

and de-worming. Our awareness campaigns help families learn how to protect their children from disease, and encourage them to adopt healthy habits.

Winning the Fight against cholera

Demba, from the village of Ga-Mamudu, central Guinea-Bissau, is passionate about preventing cholera.

He has good reason to be. In 2007, an outbreak of cholera killed three people in Ga-Mamudu. ‘We have had bitter experiences in the past,’ he says.

Yet during the most recent cholera epidemic, Ga-Mamudu became a model of how communities can work together, with Plan’s support, to prevent cholera from taking hold.

Thanks to their efforts, no cases of cholera were registered in the village.

Clean water and good sanitation can save lives Cholera is a deadly yet easily preventable disease. A form of infectious gastroenteritis caused by bacteria, the disease is caught by drinking infected water or eating food washed in infected water. Cholera causes acute diarrhoea, which is full of bacteria that can then contaminate food or infect drinking water if sanitation is poor.

Cholera can be prevented by good sanitation and by boiling drinking water. It can usually be treated by oral rehydration therapy, a simple technique.

Yet cholera outbreaks remain very common in Guinea-Bissau. As soon as an outbreak was declared, Plan pledged to help check its spread.

Helping people to help themselves Plan made people aware of how to prevent and treat cholera through community and radio campaigns. We provided hospitals with medicines to treat severe cases. We also provided disinfectants to communities and to all health facilities, and set up hand-disinfecting facilities along roads linking different communities.

Getting communities involved is vital to the success of health projects. In Ga-Mamudu, community members were very proactive, and ran an awareness campaign throughout the village. Children played an important role too, carrying out door-to-door visits to tell every household about cholera and what they needed to do to prevent it.

Produced for Guinea-Bissau by Plan International Australia.

Check points were established at every route into Ga-Mamudu, and everyone coming in had to wash their hands and feet using disinfectant.

A committee was set up to make sure every household maintained good hygiene standards.

‘We learned that cholera can be prevented with simple measures,’ says Demba, who was a member of the community cholera management team. ‘That is why we are all engaged, to make sure everyone in the community does what needs to be done.’

Free of cholera All this hard work was well worth it. Although lots of people from other villages visited or passed through Ga-Mamudu every day, the community did not register any cases of cholera. Similar intensive campaigns in other villages throughout the Bafata region, where Plan focuses its work, meant that no children were infected by cholera in rural areas there.

Bafata was the least affected region in the country.

Children have learned how they can make sure cholera doesn’t spread, and mothers are putting into practice what they have learned about making drinking water safe. ‘I wash my hands with soap before meals and after using latrines. In our house my mother boils the water we drink,’ says Idrissa, a 13-year-old student.

Now that the people of Ga-Mamudu know that they themselves can make positive changes to their health, and protect their children, they will be able to use the experience gained in the cholera prevention campaign to deal with other challenges facing them.

Some names have been changed for child protection and privacy reasons

Young people perform a ceremony about protecting the environment

The Bigger Picture Plan is working with children, families and communities to find sustainable solutions to the challenges in Guinea-Bissau. We have only given you a small insight into Plan’s work in Guinea-Bissau with this report but over the past year we also: • Worked with the government to extend Plan’s Community Birth Registration Project to another 30 rural communities • Supported 39 child participation groups, raising awareness of children’s rights, and getting children involved in issues in their communities • Trained 600 people to set up school gardens, supported 262 teachers through three-year training courses, and provided 200 women with literacy classes • Doubled the percentage of women receiving antenatal care in Plan’s working areas Your support as a sponsor is crucial to achieving these results. With the resources provided by sponsors, Plan expertise and the collaboration of communities and local partners we are making a big difference to the lives of people in Guinea-Bissau.

Thank you for your involvement!

To learn more about Plan’s work in Guinea-Bissau visit plan.org.au/ourwork/westafrica/guineabissau

‘Children have learned how they can make sure cholera doesn’t spread, and mothers are putting into practice what they have learned about making drinking water safe.’