Social support.
The cyclone relief housing project involves buiding houses for families that have hydrocephalus and spinal bifida patients and they were affected by cyclone
Before we did the needs assessment we were highly thinking of providing food and clothing, but when we engaged the community,
it was clear that durable housing was their greatest need.
Incontinence mgt.
Bowel Wash Out (BWO) is a technique that we teach persons with stool incontinence. They use the plastic chairs and the blue sets which the mothers are handling to remove the stools. They do this once in the morning per day. And they are dry the rest of the day. We have touched more than 500 persons so far who have returned to school or work because they are no longer smelly.
surgical materials
Surgical equipments such as shunts are very crucial when it comes to providing surgical treatment to hydrocephalus patients. These surgical shunts are used in an neurosurgical treatment operation called ventriculoperitoneal shunt insertion which helps to divert accumulated or blocked water from the brain to the peritoneal cavity(stomach). This is a life saving surgery without which, patients can develop serious complications and die.
Cyclone Relief Housing Project
We would like to continue to be a reputable and progressive organization that is responsive to the needs of its target people and the community. We would want to be an organization that is well known in all corners of Malawi with a reach of more than 90% of our target group available in Malawi. We would like to expand on our mandate; we would like to see ourselves reaching out to the target group as a whole. Going beyond Health and Human Rights, tackling other aspects like Education and transition from the hospital to the community (Integration). Furthermore, we envision to broaden the disability scope. We would like to accommodate more disabilities in the organization in addition to spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
House Handover Ceremony
Home Visit
We find home visit an essential component of health care especially to persons with chronic medical
conditions like spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
In Malawi, we observe that there is a significant gap between what these patients experience in the hospital
setting and at home. The implies that some things that the patients are asked to do by the health care workers,
might not be possible to implement in the patients homes.
We therefore conduct home visits to ensure that we are supporting persons with hydrocephalus and spina
bifida to overcome the barriers that they may face in their homes interms of community care.
Realizing that many patients in Malawi face challenges to access the hospital because of transport, we have a home visit program where we visit our clients in their homes.
The visit is comprised of Doctors, Nurses, Physiotherapists and lay counsellors (Those who have gone through the patient’s experience). We review the patient right away in their homes, assess their challenges, we also supply them with supplies and medicines that they use.
Folic acid distribution
Without Folic acid, our mothers would be giving births to many children with spina bifida. At child help SBH we distribute the folic acid tablets to all mothers in Malawi that have given birth to a child with spina bifida, as research has shown that these mothers are (10) times more likely to give birth to another child with spina bifida than the general population.
Advocacy
We have been advocating for inclusion of the head circumference chart in the Under Five Health Passport book. Research has shown that routine measurement and plotting of head circumference on chart helps to detect hydrocephalus early before brain damage has occurred. We have also been advocating for fortification of flour with folic acid.
