SOS Community Health Nurse, Dennis Mwaniki, sees a patient in Marsabit, Kenya

December 14, 2011: Dennis Mwaniki, a new community health nurse, has a lot on his plate. Stationed in the northern Kenyan town of Marsabit for his first nursing job, he finds himself in the middle of a three-year-drought, surrounded by pastoralists who have lost their livestock and thus their livelihood. Without food and water, the families he sees are highly vulnerable to illness.

Mwaniki works at the Hula Hula dispensary, named after one of the areas of Marsabit receiving emergency relief aid from SOS Children’s Villages. The villages targeted for help by SOS are the poorest in Marsabit and are those most affected by drought.

The SOS Assistance Program, begun in August, provides food and water to needy families through the community and the schools. With medical care in such high demand, SOS is also supplying essential drugs to four local medical facilities. One of these is the Hula Hula dispensary, which has become a center of activity as sick people seek help.

SOS gets the drugs to the Marsabit District Hospital, from where they are distributed to the four dispensaries.

People waiting to see the nurse in Hula Hula

In Hula Hula, Mwaniki sees up to 30 children a day. The most common illnesses are caused by upper respiratory tract infections, although malaria is always a problem, he says. The drugs supplied by SOS Children’s Villages, which supplement those provided by the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency, were selected to treat the most prevalent ailments, as well as conditions such as anemia, diarrhea, and ulcers.

The SOS medications allow Mwaniki to treat child illnesses quickly. “We used to have to borrow drugs from other dispensaries,” he says, “but since SOS has supplied us, that is no longer necessary.”

The people of Hula Hula still have a way to go to recover from the drought. They need to build up their strength and restore their herds to a reasonable size through natural reproduction. With the help of SOS Emergency Relief, particularly medicines, they know that if they get sick they and their children now have more of a chance to recover and to do so quickly.

Boosting a Child’s Chances of Survival

Good health is the prerequisite to reconstructing lives ravaged by famine. Every year, nearly ten million children die before they reach the age of five. Two thirds of them could be saved by simple and affordable medical services.

Give a child the Gift of Health. A gift of $90 can provide medical care for 10 SOS children in Africa.