Healthy By the Numbers – The Impact of Tiba’s Medical Volunteers
Because Tiba volunteers generously pay their own expenses, our donors’ contributions go straight to patient care. As it turns out, fifty-five U.S. dollars is our average cost to provide care to a surgical patient in Siaya County. In other words, fifty-five dollars is what it takes to get a family of eight back on its feet: back to productive work, back to school, back to community participation. The lengths such a change in circumstance can go toward escaping the cycle of poverty cannot be overstated.
American Surgeons Gary Clark & Maria Allo Prepping for their Fourth Surgery of the Day in Siaya
In September 2011 another team of U.S.-based medical professionals traveled to Siaya County to treat and teach. For quite a few of them it was their first experience volunteering in Kenya. For others, like Mike Dunn, a family practitioner from Denver, volunteering in rural Kenya is a yearly commitment.
Dr. Dunn accompanied five colleagues to work in Ukwala and Nzoia–vital outpatient clinics that see more than 45,000 patients annually. Tiba’s volunteers help the talented clinic staff to treat this massive patient load, but more importantly, they teach and learn with their Kenyan colleagues, who work every day with limited resources in a challenging health care environment. These outpatient facilities have changed the way people live in an entire district of 210,000 people. Treatment and prevention are creating better health, harder workers, and greater hope.
Kids in rural Kenya are like kids everywhere. They have no limits when thinking of their future. Tiba invests in community health care so that illness won't stand in their way
Rich Godfrey led a team of 8 surgical professionals that partnered with Kenyan colleagues to carry out 93 surgeries in 9 days. They performed minor surgeries that helped people alleviate suffering, and major surgeries that saved lives. The high number of surgeries was a record for Tiba and Matibabu, but far more importantly, the surgeries will have a tremendous impact in the local community.
The 93 patients who needed surgery are now recovering and re-starting their normal lives. They–and their care-givers– can now work and take care of themselves and their children. It is hard for most Westerners to understand the significance to a subsistence farming family of being unable to work, either from illness or care-giving duties. The costs are immense for a family whose margins are already so thin that the slightest set-back can mean irreversible decline.
The math is simple. For each surgery, an entire average-sized family of eight will immediately benefit from increased productivity and decreased stress and grief. Ninety-three surgeries multiplied by eight makes 744 people whose lives and livelihoods have materially changed this month. And since Tiba surgical volunteers will directly treat about 300 people in 2011, it is feasible their work will yield positive, measurable impact for approximately 2,400 individuals.
It’s a huge return on the investment provided by Tiba donors’ contributions. Fifty-five dollars, plus the willingness and expertise of our medical volunteers, goes a long way to helping rural Kenyan families.
We invite you to be part of our work! We are always looking for dedicated volunteers. Your financial contribution can help change a community, and 100% will go to programs in Africa. Remember, with a $55 donation you can cover the cost of a surgery in rural Kenya and help rewrite the story for the people of the Siaya County.
