Blog
Growth: Kigutu's First Ever Fashion Show!
Kigutu Fashion Show from Village Health Works on Vimeo.
On Feb 9th, the first ever Kigutu Fashion Show was put on with great success. Over 200 people were in attendance, and both participants and the audience had a wonderful time. The event was even covered by the national television station of Burundi!
My Impressions: A Trip to Kigutu
Although I heard about important presentations given the first day of the Annual Forum, I only arrived in time for the second day.The forum was held in the beautiful, spacious Community Center, newly built since my last visit in 2009.
The Drums of Change: December 2011
We noticed the change immediately as we turned onto the road going up the mountain to the Village Health Works Clinic. Gone was the deeply and dangerously rutted curved road that sometimes veered perilously close to the edge of a steep downward slope I remembered from our visit of two years ago. The road was now smooth and welcoming. It took a mere 20 minutes instead of the hour it had previously taken to traverse the eleven kilometers to the clinic.
As we traveled up this recently restored road, I thought how soon the old road would be forgotten. 160 villagers built the old road with nothing more than hoes, pickaxes, machetes, and their bare hands. The villagers’ work had made it possible, with extraordinary effort, for people to drive and push trucks up the mountainside laboriously transporting construction materials, a fifty-thousand-liter water tank, a generator, medicines, medical equipment, and many other necessities required to build and operate the clinic.
Cows for Christmas
Cows for Christmas
What did you find under your tree this year? For the Village Health Works the holiday celebrations were particularly mooving...see what we did there?
On December 22nd, the team in Kigutu welcomed two new, four-legged members of the family. Our new cows are cross-bred with domestic and imported stock to produce the highest quality milk. Sadly, this means they are not readily available for purchase in our area. You can imagine, then, that we were thrilled to discover our new heifers were both expecting!
The first-born calf came in on the coat tails of the New Year and as such, the staff decided her name could only be Yamwaka, meaning “Of the New Year” in Kirundi, the local language of Burundi.
The Power of Your Gift
Dear Friends,
I would like to introduce you to Genevieve.
Genevieve is 22 years old. She was born and raised in Nyentambwe, a small village about a thirty-minute walk from the Village Health Works health center in Kigutu, Burundi. She has a beautiful singing voice and is an accomplished gardener.
Genevieve and her husband, Emelie, met one day while both were walking along the country road. Genevieve and Emele married in the fall and much to their delight, they recently learned that they are expecting a child. When asked whether she wants a boy or a girl, Genevieve smiles. “Umwana n’umwana,” she says, “a child is a child.”
Over the coming months, Genevieve will receive regular high-quality prenatal care from Village Health Works’ clinicians.
But when it comes to labor and delivery, Village Health Works lacks the facilities necessary to ensure the mother and child’s safety.
Supporting Women with Care and Programs
As with so many inspiring women throughout the world, Burundian women continue to overcome even the most heartbreaking stories. Case after case seems to bare out a simple truth: in terms of global public health and development, it is women who create change. When there is a road to be built, bricks to be fired or land to be prepared for planting, it is the women of Kigutu who arrive first with babies on their backs, and stay until the work is complete. The women of Burundi have a resilience that is unmatched and a spirit that is unbreakable.
But it’s not easy to be a woman in Burundi. In fact, on Mother's Day 2003, the United Nations ranked Burundi as one of the world's five worst places for women. Sadly, Burundian women’s lives have improved little in recent years. Women here face a one-in-nine chance of dying in childbirth, high prevalence of gender-based violence and little support for women's economic development, compounding the already challenging context in which all Burundians live.
One such woman, Anne, recently visited VHW. She sits across from Dr. Melino, Head Physician, with her head slightly bowed and her fingers interlaced in her lap. Anne has been here to Kigutu before. A few years ago she came seeking prenatal care for her first pregnancy and was counseled to have an HIV test, to which she agreed. The test came back positive. The doctors provided her with emotional support and counseling, taught her about nutrition and hygiene that would help fend off opportunistic infections and gave her an appointment for a second prenatal visit to start Antiretroviral Treatment. This visit would be the time to prepare Anne for what it would take to prevent mother-to-child transmission; we asked her to come back with her husband.
What the Women’s Health Pavilion Will Mean for Care
By Dziwe Ntaba, M.D.
A lot has changed since we opened the doors at Village Health Works. As we look ahead to 2012 and the construction of our state-of-the-art Women’s Health Pavilion, the story of the baby in this photo has been on my mind.
“Samantha” was born at our clinic and is lucky to be alive after a hair-raising delivery. Her mother had been in prolonged labor at home with the help of traditional birth attendants that have no access to formal training or obstetric supplies. When her water broke, she was exposed to an unsterile technique that led to contamination and infection.
Read more: What the Women’s Health Pavilion Will Mean for Care
Of Crosses and Cassava
The road to Kigutu curls through groves of palm trees and arches over a series of steep hills. In recognition of the services provided by Village Health Works, the Burundian government is now resurfacing the treacherous road that leads up to our clinic. This level of government cooperation, nearly unheard of for non-profit organizations, is particularly meaningful for Village Health Works as this road was first created 5 years ago by the intrepid volunteerism of the communities we serve.
A Story of Two Sisters
Every year, millions of Americans participate in walks, marathons, bar crawls and bike races to raise awareness about cancer. When surrounded by pink ribbons, sparkly new Nikes and yellow bracelets, cancer takes on a specific feature – it is treatable and in time, curable. In East Africa, cancer appears to us in an entirely different fashion. In this case, on the back of a motorcycle, thousands of feet in the mountain air of Kigutu, Burundi.
Joseph
The post-conflict setting of extreme poverty and abysmal health outcomes in Burundi have had devastating consequences on Burundian society as a whole. With disease and misery such fundamental aspects of every day lives, even family units are faced with previously unthinkable choices. Families in prosperous countries can perhaps glean an understanding of what this looks like through the following heartbreaking story. A young boy suffering from end-stage malnutrition was found by the side of the road by a stranger who took him to a nearby hospital for medical help. There was no money to pay for services and so the hospital was unable to help. The boy was taken to another clinic about 25 km from Kigutu by yet another stranger, but with a lack of resources they too were unable to help. Eventually, the plight of this dying child reached the ears of one of our Village Health Workers, who sought him out and then correctly diagnosed him with marasmus (severe malnutrition) due to intestinal parasites.
Simon: The Ghost
One day last year, a health worker came to us with a terrible story: a man named Simon who lived in a nearby village had been locked inside a room of his house without food and water and left to die. His family had done this to him after discovering that he was sick with HIV. Unfortunately, this was not uncommon; those suffering with HIV in Burundi are often stigmatized so. Upon hearing of Simon’s fate, we immediately drove to his house. There we found him lying in his own fluids and on death’s door. We quickly bundled Simon into the truck and took him back the clinic. Slowly and miraculously, we were able to nurse him back to health.
