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

Can't buy it.... no worries we'll make it..

Lydia and Patricia are working on development of a new tool for simplification of production of the drop chute parts and other items needed as we prepare for conditions to improve for drops into the Afram Plains.

If this light folding unit comes out right it may be something that rural communities could implement in light engineering in their developments.

We are always looking at appropriate technology for development and enjoy seeing the changes to people's lives that health and technology, albeit realitively simple, can bring.

Drop door .. Take two..

In preparation for higher volume drops in the coming months we are working on a new release mechanism. .. watch this space for more details and field trials!

The First ETCHE drop

Submitted by Michaela Sholes

If we are learning anything this week from all the calls we’re getting, it is that the communities are as varied in personality as they are enthusiastic about the drops this last week and the start of ETCHE! 

With our response rate about 65%, we’ve heard from communities as large as 1500 and some as small as 350.  Although each community targeted has in common that they are located on the lake’s edge, they have so far each been unique in relation to factors such as distance to the nearest clinic, existence of a school and/or latrines, and community water source.  In talking with community members, it continues to be eye-opening when they share some of their challenges with us via crackly phone lines.  For example, ETCHE bag #A019 which landed in Akotoe, was received by a local school teacher who, in describing his community, told us that his people are forced to get their water from the lake because the water from the two boreholes nearby have become salty and undrinkable.

It has been interesting to hear from the communities how they received their ETCHE bags.  For example, a representative from Dzogba called me yesterday to apologize for not calling sooner but that their school children had only just found the bag in the wooded part of their community that day.  He informed me that the community has called a meeting for tomorrow and will call me again once they have read the letter from MoM and had a chance to discuss it with the people. 

My favorite part by far though has been the initial and continued interaction with community members.  The excitement in their voice is unmistakable.  When you answer an unknown number on your phone and the chipper voice on the other end immediately says happily, “Good Afternoon Madam!  We are pleased to have received the bag from your airplane and we wanted to let you be aware that we want to participate!”

Many of the phone calls from the communities have come with a representative on the direct line and you can hear the entire community in the background as they all wait for this initial contact.  In many cases, the community’s chief  (or Dademantse, as he is called here) or a teacher is usually the one to make initial contact, but that has provided a perfect venue within which to answer questions and explain to them our vision for a community-identified health volunteer.

We will do one more round of pinging drops in the coming week or two in order to gather information about the communities, but we hope to have our kickoff and initial training in the weeks following.

Our first drops... a flying success.

As we look over the images of yesterdays drops and discuss the oncoming phone calls from the pinging bags, I cannot help but smile, we really have started something amazing... There has been a lot of sacrifice just to get this far, but we, together, have made it happen... And this is just the first run... With web visits in the hundreds today, we can see that we are not alone to be excited at what is happening... West Africans building and flying aircraft to help West Africans to move towards healthy and success filled lives... One flight at a time.

Thank you for calling Medicine on the Move, please hold....

The calls began around 12:30pm as I was driving home from the Fulani camp. I saw a strange number pop up on my phone...and then another one..and still more until around 7:30 this evening! Over crackly phone lines and iffy reception, we have made contact with nearly 10 communities already. It's the first day and that's nearly 50% response rate! I'm thrilled to see what tomorrow brings! I admit, it made me smile mid-phone call as I felt like those busy secretaries in movies who move so rapidly from conversation to conversation "Thank you for calling Medicine on the Move, please hold; Thank you for calling Medicine on the Move"

Getting to "meet" each of the community representatives via the phone, answering their various questions about the ETCHE program, and learn a little bit about each of their individual areas has been the absolute highlight of the week so far for me!


An added bonus to an already exciting day was a visit from James, the health volunteer from Battorkope! Our meeting was the first official visit to take place in our new MoM office in B3 as we asked for his feedback on some of the health messages we plan to include in the ETCHE bags! His insight was much appreciated and we look forward to implementing some of his ideas.



Each drop costs approximatley $50. If you would like to sponsor a healthcare drop please make a donation to MoM Via the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

It's taken 18 years.. Today marks the beginning....

Today marked a moment in history that will probably only be noticed by a few - perhaps you included. Today we ran the first pinging runs in Upper Manya Krobo.

It was amazing... We had been delayed by weather, but our trusty Rotax Powered, Zenith CH701 sat, ready, waiting. With around 140litre fuel capacity and 20 drop bags on board, 9G ZAF was ready to go, and this morning, 'GO we went'!

We dropped a total of 19 bags, but on 2 drops we called a foul (my fault, a snag on the camera) and so we re-dropped.

The images shown here are marvellous - they show the amazingness of it all... and you can see the aircraft shadow in many...

The flying went smoothly and safely, with Patricia Mawuli flying left seat, and I ran 'drop master' position. We shared the roles of GPS tagging, photography and dropping as well as flying the plane. Patricia would set up on the target, descending from 500'AGL to the approved 200'AGL drop height, as she passed 400' she hit the GPS marker, and I got ready to drop and photo... the people were amazing, they heard the plane, moved clear of the approach path, and then ran to collect the drop bag. For these communities it is new, but many have heard about it and many have seen it demonstrated at Battorkope and Kpong during the research phase. Between villages I would share the flying control duties so as to give Patricia a rest from the concentrated low-level flying. We know these areas well, and run through the flight on our stock images we have built of our target areas, we know all the trees, the odd power lines and comms towers, but still make a 'security check' before the descent and declare an 'escape route'. All went well and, as usual in aviation, planning and preparation paid dividends... The research phase is now over... Today was not research - today was outreach.

As I write we have around a 50% response rate in the first 12 hours... tomorrow may bring more - all were happy to be considered as a part of this outreach - and we will keep you up to date with the outcomes....

Michaela will report on the community responses tomorrow!

The Keys to the Kingdom

Today is a big day for Ben and Michaela, after barely 4 weeks on the ground they are being given the keys to Kpong Airfield for one week. Although building work has come to a sudden standstill due to lack of cash flow, the upside is that they will not need to deal with masons for the week.... the downside is that B3 (their accommodation) has not yet got the drains sorted out and Mr Solo is still working on their bed and doors... remember we make it all here...

 We will use the available skills sets in the WAASPS staff to get as much done as we can, and Ben and Michaela will be starting some more training with the AvTech girls in relation to health care delivery, nutrition and other topics that will become an integral part of their involvements in MoM...

Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was the preparation of two bags for a quick bag-drop to Battorkope tomorrow, the only community we are currently allowed to drop to, with the documents that they need for us to fly some of their great young people at a forthcoming fly me day... (which will be a day with a difference - since we will also be flying up to 20 Queen Mothers on that day!)

We wish Ben and Michaela lots of challenges with opportunities and solutions during their 'first week of solo ops'!

A Sad reality

Sadly today, one of our supporters took a young lady from a local school to the Hospital. He supports a wonderful young lady who is blind in one eye, but bright, polite and eager.

At the hospital it appears that she has TB. It is not uncommon here. Something we need to add to our list 'of to do's' for the Bag-drop programme - TB education.

Get well soon to the brave young lady.... and to all who are not in a TB area, please remember it is a real challenge in many developing nations.