GRID and NEA News

Brenda Mensah has written a post about the Leyaata Project that has been featured on the blog of the Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health.

We are just one small NGO. … But we are a part of the global effort reduce the numbers of babies who die needlessly, and we are committed to “keep doing what we know works” in our corner of the globe.

The whole post is worth reading.

Each year a team of 60 health professionals travel to the GRID/NEA project area in Carpenter, Northern Ghana. In two weeks, they treat nearly ten thousand people who would otherwise not be able to access health care. This multidisciplinary team includes surgeons, doctors, dentists, optometrists, nurses … and pharmacists.

The volunteer service of health team pharmacists Susan Fockler, Linda Dresser, and Paula Vanderpluym was recently recognized by the Ontario Branch of the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists, which presented them with the E. Amy Eck award for a Humanitarian/Volunteer Project.

In addition, Susan Fockler, who has been the health team’s lead pharmacist since the first year, was also recently recognized for her accomplishments as Director of Pharmacy at Ross Memorial Hospital. She has led the hospital pharmacy in making incredible gains in efficiency and effectiveness in the past seven years, and in February 2014 received the “Leadership and Best Practices” Award from the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists.

Congratulations to Susan and your teammates! We are grateful for your commitment and service that is making a difference both in Canada and abroad.

In our May 2013 Newsletter, we had the opportunity thank the volunteers, families, and supporters of our 2013 Ghana Health Team. It is impossible to describe the depth of gratitude that we have to all of you who enabled this team of professionals to bring healing to the poorest of the poor in Ghana.

But we’re also indebted to another group of volunteers, who worked in frigid conditions in the middle of an Ontario winter. This past February, these dear friends packed and loaded a container of supplies for our ongoing work in Ghana.

David and Brenda Mensah were in Carpenter when the container’s contents arrived. They write:

We were all excited on Wednesday when we heard the truck pulling up by the training centre where we were in the midst of studies with about 80 pastors. They were a great help unloading it and within a couple of hours had everything off and to their various corners on the project site. We had a pickup truck by the back that took the school supplies, books and used clothes to the hall. By the time we had finished there was a mountain that pretty much took over the room!

We really smiled when we saw all the building supplies come out: scaffolding, ladders, wheelbarrows, shovels and the like! Amazing. This should make our next building project a piece of cake.

The manure spreader rolled off the truck and down the ramp just perfectly. They had a pickup close buy for the anesthesia machine and it moved pretty easily too.

I’m not sure who was the most excited — Soale with all his aquaculture equipment or Abraham with all his kitchen equipment! Whatever the case they are both putting the items for their departments to good use already. The Canadian aquaculture specialist arrived on Wednesday and they are already laying out the airstones to produce more fish. Abraham and his crew, finished with the pastors, have a group of about 30 chiefs/elders today and are getting ready for 80 Leyaata volunteers/health professionals who are coming next week!

Our deepest thanks to all who were involved on those snowy, cold, winter days in Glenn’s yard to make this possible. Every item will serve its purpose and add to all that is happening in and through the work God has called each of us to here in Mo land.

Just before returning to Ghana this past month, Dr. Mensah appeared on 100 Huntley Street. [Read more…] about Dr. Mensah on 100 Huntley Street