In February 2016 a team of doctors left for the island of Igbedor, in Nigeria. There, Sister Enza has been fighting for years to protect the local population from disease and from the floods of the River Niger, where the island lies.
Thanks to the Gruppo Volontari Soccorso, and in collaboration with the Parish of Bagolino, our first step was to provide a motorboat to take patients from the village to the hospital in Onitsha.
But the goal was to renovate the village's entire hospital. And we are finally doing it… from a simple dream to a shining achievement.
Shining in every sense of the word: thanks to the wonderful engineers of "Ingegneri Volontari onlus", the electrical and plumbing systems are almost complete. Massimo and Fiorenzo, with the other Nigerian and Italian engineers and technicians, have brought drinking water and electricity where there was none. The building itself is almost finished, and what is needed now is laboratory equipment, an ozone therapy unit and an ultrasound scanner, as well as staff training. We will be looking for funds to meet these important needs.
Nursing training for local staff is essential for the hospital to work, and we hope it will also receive support from the Nigerian Ministry of Health: a doctor is expected to visit once a week to run outpatient clinics.
With 15–20 beds, the hospital will be able to care for the most serious patients who need admission. Once the hospital opens, it will still be essential to plan and guarantee daily nursing care. Later, Intermed's medical staff will set up a small medical laboratory and an ozone therapy clinic.
Meanwhile, with Dr Matteo Bonetti and Germani Basket Brescia, lasting support has been created for the hospital, in particular for the paediatric clinic that deals with malnutrition, malaria and intestinal parasites. Igbedor has a population of 8,000, including 5,000 children with no access to primary healthcare.
So we warmly thank everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute to all this: Fab Lab and Biomedica su Misura, who generously gave us a pair of legs, and Germani Basket Brescia, who took up this challenge!