Last Week
I wasn't at Rotary so I don't know what the report back was but I do know that Joan Sainsbury is busy with the conversion of the Carers Club at Holy Family College into an Interact Club and that James Croswell and the International Committee have made considerable progress where our proposed Cervical Cancer Project is concerned......
On Friday morning
there was an ad hoc meeting with Dr Carla Chibwesha , representing Right to
Care , about the potential Global Grant Project concerning cervical cancer. A
preliminary agreement was reached to link onto the existing mobil screening
unit at Cosmo City/ Diepsloot to provide an independent mobile treatment clinic
to provide “ on site” treatment and obviate the need the need for patients to travel
to a Provincial Hospital for such treatment. The hope is that a greater
percentage of patients, showing positive test for cancer, will be attended to.
The next step is to agree on an appropriate MoU. The photo shows those who
attended the meeting.
Thank you, James, for the photograph and the information. Congratulations.
Cyclone Idai
The devastation, loss of life and the consequent problems of starvation and disease have produced an outpouring of international assistance not only for those in Mozambique but also for victims in Zimbabwe and Malawi. Mozambique is part of our Rotary District and clubs have been asked to assist, mainly with financial contributions. The Mozambique Rotarians are are in the forefront of Rotary's efforts. Here is a very disturbing video that really underlines the magnitude of the disaster at a personal level.
This Week
Marian Laserson will be talking to us about the Rietfontein/Sizwe Development.
The development is across the road from Huddle Park Golf Course and Sandringham High.
Sizwe Hospital was first built in 1895, as Rietfontein Lazaretto, it stood alone in a remote location, a full-day's cart-ride from the centre of the town, established that far away as a safety measure against the smallpox epidemic sweeping Johannesburg.
One of South Africa's unsung heroes is the late Dr. John Max Mehliss, who for 32 years, was the hospital's superintendent and was responsible for treating some 160,000 patients. After only 2 years of formal high school study in King William's Town, during which he proved to have an exceptional ability, he completed his courses at the Universities of Munich and Guttenburg, gaining recognition as one of Germany's top students. He caught the eye of Otto von Bismarck, Germany's "Iron Chancellor", who asked of him, "Who are you, an unknown from an unknown land, to come here and beat all our best men?" Together with German physician Ehrlich, John Mehliss helped develop Salvarsan, a cure for Syphilis. 
The fame of the hospital, called "Mealies Hospital" by patients who corrupted the unusual name Mehliss, spread far and wide and it was inundated with patients from all over Africa coming to be treated there. In one instance a young black woman brought two old patients, both crippled and unable to walk, to the hospital. She had carried one of the old people 100 meters, set him down and returned to fetch his wife. It took them three months to arrive at their destination...
Archbishop Desmond Tutu spent two years as a patient in the Rietfontein Hospital, undergoing treatment for and eventually being cured of his TB.
Its treatments for plague, for communicable diseases like Spanish flu, Bubonic Plague and smallpox, as well as its successes with Veneral Disease, TB, leprosy, typhoid, anthrax, Ebola, and Marburg fever among others were groundbreaking.
While many of the hundreds of thousands of patients survived their illnesses and lived long years, about 7000 diverse people - including Chinese mine workers in the 1900s, Indians, Malawians, some Irish, English, Germans, Poles and of course some South Africans of all creeds are buried there. Three of the original five cemeteries have been found, but to date there is no sign of either the Jewish or the Leprosy Cemeteries.
Metal markers rather than tombstones identified most of these burial sites. In 2004 the Department of Water Affairs destroyed the Bluegum trees separating the cemeteries, because they were "foreign trees". The Department promised to replace the trees with indigenous ones more suited to the environment, but to date - 10 years later - nothing has happened.
At the same time as the trees were uprooted, the metal markers on the graves began to disappear. Mr Eben De-Villiers, manager of the nursery in the grounds of the Sizwe Hospital, which is opposite Saheti school for many years, remembers, some years back, huge heaps of metal markers with numbers on them, as well as markers with crosses on them commemorating soldiers who died in the Boer War. All this metal, he said, was collected from the graves and sold as scrap metal.
In the last year tombstones have begun to be stolen. The Guthrie family lost three family members in 2 days: their huge tombstone is one of those that has disappeared.
Because of the presence of the graveyards and the danger of diseases coming from the graves, the area has for many years been secluded and protected from damaging development. Today it is home to troops of monkeys, to mongoose, owls, rodents of sort and a type of a small duiker. In addition, orange and red data plants within the grasslands are also present. Part of the area is a wetland; and three rivers run through the property, the largest being the Jukskei River. Sadly today, more and more trees are being cut down, thus destroying wildlife habitat.
Load Shedding
A brief respite but here's equipment you can use to ameliorate the situation when it returns....and it will!
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the Rotary-USAID Partnership, which has brought communities and resources together to provide clean water, sanitation facilities, and hygiene education in developing countries.
 |
| Rotary-USAID education programs are teaching students in Ghana, like Philomina Okyere how to effectively wash her hands. More than 35 Rotary clubs are working in partnership on WASH projects in Ghana. Our Potential |
Rotary and USAID, the world’s largest governmental aid agency, bring distinct strengths to the effort. Rotary activates a global network to raise money, rally volunteers, and oversee construction, while USAID provides technical support to design and carry out the initiatives and build the capacity of local agencies to operate and maintain the systems.
“Rotary brings a lot of energy to the program and has the ability to create a lot of buzz,” says Ryan Mahoney, a WASH and environmental health adviser for USAID and member of the Rotary-USAID steering committee. “They have been great at leveraging their relationships with community leaders to get projects off the ground.”
In Ghana, which was a focal point when the alliance launched, 35 Rotary clubs across six regions will have implemented more than 200 sustainable WASH programs by 2020.
Fredrick Muyodi and Alasdair Macleod, members of The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers, visited 30 of them last September to assess and evaluate their successes and ongoing challenges.
Macleod, a member of the Rotary Club of Monifieth & District, Tayside, Scotland, was impressed with the education efforts he saw. Most of the schools he visited had built-in education components, including a dedicated WASH educator on staff. In one case, the WASH teacher and students made and distributed posters about the importance of hand washing.
“Long-term projects need to start with the younger generation,” says Macleod. He adds that students can be agents of change in their own homes and in their communities by teaching the proper technique.
Other site visits revealed unexpected challenges, such as security. When a school has sanitation resources that are otherwise unavailable in a community, for example, the risk of break-ins and vandalism increases. Muyodi, a member of the Rotary Club of Kampala City-Makerere, Uganda, says that projects can lessen the risk by expanding to include the surrounding community.
Distance is also sometimes a challenge, if project sites are too far away for the clubs involved to commit to regular site visits. To remedy this, Muyodi says, clubs should engage with more local residents and create better links with leaders on the community and district levels.
Denham, a member of the Rotary-USAID steering committee, attributes the alliance’s success in Ghana to better coordination and communication, from using WhatsApp to connect with partners to hiring full-time staff. As it enters its second phase, the partnership — a landmark public/private collaboration in the WASH field — has secured $4 million in commitments for projects in Ghana, Madagascar, and Uganda. Rotary clubs in each country are responsible for raising $200,000.
“Rotary is in the business of social and economic development,” says Denham. “Our work in WASH can be a testament to that.”
No comments:
Post a Comment