Progress achieved by the African Medical Mission
Seven years have passed since we last visited Chris and Jenny McConnachie in Umtata and there have been many changes. A new Academic Teaching Hospital is being built alongside the General Hospital and Chris and Jenny can watch the progress from their sitting room windows. When we left the levelling stage of the site was almost complete. Bedford Hospital now has a new operating theatre, an X-ray department and the foundations for an out-patients department are laid and will be finished soon – all funded by private subscriptions.
The Itipini Informal Settlement, known locally as “The Dump”, is running smoothly under Jennys guidance and the Primary Health Care Clinic is open from 9am to 2pm, Monday to Friday for a variety of treatments, including family planning, baby clinic, dressings and the administration of TB drugs.
The pre-school children are looked after and taught by very able Transkeian ladies and receive a daily meal. Twelve or so abandoned babies under 2 years old are being moved and re-housed in new, larger premises in Ikwezi, about three miles from Umtata.
The long term TB patients at the Occupational Unit in the hospital continue to make a wide range of garments, cushions, woollen shoulder bags, leather sandles, wallets, purses, candles and wire fencing, not forgetting the traditional beadwork. There is a programme to help patients being dried out from alcohol.
Vision Care, for whom so many of you have supplied spectacles in the past, is being efficiently run by Fiona Webber, the third daughter of Jenny and Chris. Volunteers continue to help with every branch of medicine, nursing and physiotherapy. They are all invited to an Open House and supper on Sunday evenings with Jenny and Chris when they can compare experiences and use the ‘phone and fax facilities in the African Medical Mission office. And so the good work goes on.
If anyone has any outgrown baby or toddler clothes in good condition, they would be most welcome at the Itipini Settlement. Please leave them at Brambles, Chipperfield Common or contact me on 01923 262416.
Kate Farrow