Healthcare drops.. now with style...

We have now received the poster packs for the next set of drops. Here is a selection being admired by
Patricia and Lydia as they prepare to return to Ghana after Lydia's surgery.

Massive thanks to Joerg and his team for an excellent production.

We expect to reach over 200 000 people with air drops in 2013.

Thank you all for your amazing support and working with us to change lives sustainably, one flight and one person at a time!

 

The new drop programme contains a special personal message from Patricia printed on the back of the Wolfpack poster. .. it reads. ..

Dear Community Members

My name is Patricia Mawuli, I come from a village just like yours, in the Volta Region. One day, six years ago, I was working collecting firewood when I heard an aeroplane overhead. I traced that aeroplane to a small airfield in the Eastern Region where the people were concerned about health and education. Their team is called Medicine on the Move, and I now lead Ghana's air-drop outreach with them. Today, we are reaching out to your community.

I learned to build aircraft, install aircraft engines and maintain them. I, along with other Ghanaian girls, built the aircraft that dropped this package to your community - and I flew the mission to drop this message to you personally. This very package has been prepared by young women from communities just like yours!

Today, I hope that this message and the accompanying posters will inspire you as a community to do many new things. I hope that you will use these posters in your schools and in your community health education programmes. I have a few things to ask of you all:

1. Please enrol your children when they are young, and keep your children in school, and remember the girl children must go to school too. Our children are the future. Education is important. I know, I have used my education to be able to reach you with this message today.

2. Please make sure that you do not allow people to urinate and defecate in or near water sources. Please use latrines - it really will help to reduce infections and disease. Make sure that latrines do not flood and spread disease.

3. Please do not bathe directly in the lakes and rivers. Try to reduce the risk to you and your family of the diseases spread in the waters around you.

4. Please remember to filter or boil water before you drink it. So many people are getting sick from using  non-safe water.

5. Please keep your communities clean. We see the rubbish around your communities as we fly over. If possible, establish some sort of community waste management. Where possible, and without causing risk of fire to homes or fields, burn your rubbish (borla) on a regular basis. Rubbish around your homes is a health risk - keep your community clean.

6. Please include meat, fresh vegetables and fruit in the diet of your family - it is important for your health.

7. Please reduce the malaria risks to your families by reducing the breeding places and use a mosquito net over your bed to reduce the number of mosquito bites that can spread the disease. If you or your children get malaria please get suitable treatment early - remember malaria kill many people every day.

8. Mothers, please feed your babies with breast milk for at least the first 6 months, and if possible for up to 2 years as a supplement. Your breast milk helps to protect your babies and make them strong.

9. Please take washing of your hands seriously. Wash your hands with soap and clean water after handling money, going to the toilet and before cooking or eating - and before feeding your children. Dirt on your hands can make your babies very sick - even dirt that you cannot see. Please wash your hands well.

We hope that this message will help you to help improve your community, keeping your children strong, healthy and well educated. We send this message of care and encouragement, and hope that you will find a use for the materials we give to you freely. We wish your community health, education and great future. Please take care of each other and your home.

Patricia Mawuli and the young women from Medicine on the Move

Kpong Airfield, Eastern Region, Ghana