ELWA Hospital Benevolence (LR 82876)
ELWA Hospital exists to bring health care to the poor. It also purposes to operate in a self sustaining manner, thus appropriate fees are charged to cover ongoing costs of operation. When the poor are unable to pay a portion of their bill, this account provides funds to cover the unpaid portion of the bill. This is a very important project that helps many Liberians who simply are not able to pay long-term medical costs or surgeries.
For an accompanying article, see “ELWA Hospital Benevolence” at http://sim.org/country.asp?fun=12&fun2=1&cid=29&mid=&pgid=&prid=41.
Project Amount: $10,000 ($10,000 needed)
ELWA Hospital Renovation, Phase 5 (LR 95207)
Since its closure and total looting in 1996 due to the Liberian civil war, phased renovation projects have gradually resupplied and renovated in functional areas. Clinic (phase 1); pediatrics, obstetrics, ER and surgery (phase 2); adult wards, pharmacy and equipment upgrade (phase 3) have all contributed to the ability to offer increased health care to a needy people. Phase 4 completes the basic functional renovations with laboratory, x-ray and private ward and office renovation and resupply as well as allowing completion of some earlier phases. The goal of Phase 5 is to complete the renovations and purchases that are needed to make this a fully functioning hospital. This includes a much needed fridge for the nurses station, a deep cycle battery for the OB, new kitchen facilities, new washing machines and dryers, a speaker system in each of the rooms and the wards so that the staff and patients can hear Radio ELWA, books and tracts for the library and chaplains office, a new roof over part of the structure, additional furnishings (hospital beds, exam tables, classroom seating), scales, an EKG machine, manual suction machines, CPR sets, emergency room stretchers, vacuum extractors, otoscopes, and a floor washing-polishing machine.
Project Amount: $117,013 ($99,367 needed)
Man and Machine
Wilmont Karn Taytay, Laundry Man
Mr. Taytay was born in 1959, in Backon Town (Compound #3B), Grand Bassa County. He moved to Monrovia in 1964, and got his first job at ELWA as a youth who helped take care of the children who attended ELWA Academy. He worked for several missionaries, and was then first employed at ELWA Hospital in September 1977 as a janitor. He then started washing clothes in the Laundry Department in 1982; this is where he has been working since that time, except for two occasions during the 1990s when he and all of the rest of the Hospital staff had to leave ELWA because of the war. Mr. Taytay used modern wash machines and dryers (see the picture) until the war hit ELWA in July 1990 when all of the staff fled and the hospital was looted. Would you consider helping provide for some or all of the $6000 that is needed to purchase a new wash machine and dryer for the hospital? This will allow Mr. Taytay and the other laundry staff to become more efficient, and help Mr. Taytay take care of some of his back problems that he has developed over time. Please pray for Mr. Taytay and this need at ELWA Hospital whenever you use a washier or dryer, or wear clothes that have been cleaned by them.
Make a difference now by supporting this effort.
ELWA Hospital Outreach Team (LR 95208)
This project allows the skilled staff of ELWA Hospital to have an outreach to rural areas of Liberia, where health needs are even greater than in the Monrovia area, where ELWA is located. This project will allow ELWA Hospital to send 2 health outreach teams per year. Each team will include a Surgeon, nurses, operating room staff, and possibly laboratory technician, to do health outreach activities and surgical care in collaboration with rural hospitals in underserved areas of Liberia. The project will assist with transportation costs, costs of drugs and surgical supplies, and will cover the salaries of those who are staffing the project during their absence.
Project Amount: $48,816 ($48,816 needed)
ELWA Hospital HIV-AIDS Education Project (LR 95306)
The incidents of AIDS has skyrocketed in Liberia since the war began fourteen years ago, so SIM-Liberia started to help our partner, ELWA Hospital, facilitate an HIV counseling, patient and family support, and community education effort in 2002. This helped take the pressure off of the regular doctors and nursing staff who were counseling all of the HIV patients up until that time. There was an 8.2% infection rate in Liberia as of 2002, and an alarming 10% of all of the people who are tested for HIV come out with positive results. Beginning with August 2002 when ELWA Hospital started this program, and through June 2004, this department has identified 302 patients; 57 have died, and the office staff is working with 258 other patients.
The counselor, Mrs. Pate Chon, has an office at the Hospital. She regularly sees AIDs patients, conducts large and small group counseling sessions, and visits the patients at home for sessions of Bible Study, evangelism, family support, education about HIV and AIDS, and prayer. The program is designed to be home and community based, to bring awareness of AIDS to others, and to keep infected persons integrated with families and communities rather than institutionalize them. When you go and talk to patients at home, you get more people involved in the awareness/integration business. In the next five years, most homes will probably have infected persons in them, so the work that we are doing now is critical to setting a foundation for the future.
We have learned that the death rate drops for patients who enter our counseling program and start taking treatments and other supplements such as multi-vitamins and Tylenol. Most importantly, we praise God for those who have come to know Him and the fruits of his power through this program.
Project Amount: $46,093 ($12,793 needed)
Send remittance to: SIM-USA, Box 7900, Charlotte, NC, 28241, or to the nearest SIM office: http://sim.org/aboutSIM.asp?fun=6
Contact Information:
Liberia.director@sim.org