Rural Health Clinic Update 2024

With 34 clinics completed, over one million residents of the rural regions of Hawassa, Ethiopia, are now benefiting from cleaner healthcare facilities.

Three years ago we embarked on a journey to change even more lives thorugh our Maternal Clinic grant funding project. Our goal was to provide clean water access to the rural maternal health clinics in Hawassa, Ethiopia. For many years Ethiopia has had the highest number of infant mortality cases. A major cause to infant mortality is lack of clean water during the birthing process. With sepsis cases high in this region, due to the lack of proper sanitation and hygiene, we knew the impact would be huge. With the help of our well implementation team SCES, clean water access as well as water and sanitation (WASH) training has been introduced to these rural areas which has provided outstanding results. Infant mortality and sepsis cases have dramatically reduced by at least 60%.

This training has proven to scale the effects further. Educating staff on critical sanitation practices who then educate their patients and families has triggered a ripple effect of awareness and education, proving itself to be a key component to the dramatic success of these projects.

Additionally, clinic directors have developed creative ways to utilize their water access to support their operations and keep medical care costs for the surrounding community members low. Initiating cash crop production, has enabled clinics to support their operations and even address malnutrition issues in their surrounding communities. To date we have completed 34 clinics.