A CONTAINER OF HOPE FOR ZAMBIA
A 40-foot container that arrived last month is already changing lives in rural Ndola.
In the impoverished Copperbelt Province where changes in mine ownership have eliminated jobs and devastated once-thriving villages, there stands a symbol of health and hope. Right next to the bustling Franciscan Center, a former beer hall is now the community’s first local hospital– serving rural villagers and families living in the bush who can’t afford to travel to the nearest city for care. This incredible transformation was the work of the Dominican sisters who saw not an abandoned beer hall, but opportunity.
“They were serving the local community and needed space,” explains Shaunna Graf, Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving for the Conventual Franciscan Friars-Province of Our Lady of Consolation, the organization that fundraised the tranformative container-- with help of their generous donors. “When you’re in Zambia, a beer hall is not much different from a medical facility. The sisters took the former beer hall and made a chapel, a cafeteria and a small medical clinic. The sisters, the Friars and the Zambian people are resourceful and very well equipped to make the best out of what they have.”
In Ndola, caring for the sick and elderly are typically responsibilities assumed by extended family. “It’s a very caring, family-oriented culture,” says Graf. “Women especially often take care of multiple family members– aunts, grandmothers, children- in addition to working outside of the home.” However, their community is vulnerable to tropical infectious diseases like malaria– making the need for professional medical care especially critical.
Due to the hard work of the Friars and the sisters and the help of six nurses and two doctors, the clinic has evolved in the past few years– stretching to meet many of the local health needs by adding an ER, labor and delivery, a pharmacy and dental clinic. The arrival of this huge shipment will bring a tremendous elevation in care to the facility– equipping it to handle emergency surgeries and deliveries and to accommodate overnight care: “The plan is to achieve teaching hospital status– to hopefully move from a level one hospital to a level three,” says Graf. This will be a huge change for people who would have to drive six hours by car– if they have one– for care, and who would sleep on the sidewalks to wait for a doctor. It gives a little context as to why the sisters were smiling such big smiles as they unloaded the long-awaited container.
|