Medical aid in Niger

During 2006 chairman Gavin Bate led a trip to Niger with a group of clients to view the total solar eclipse from the middle of the Sahara.

They saw many wonderful sights, not least the eclipse itself, but also many harrowing ones. Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world and suffers huge neglect following many years of war. Sadly, after a short period of peace, war has broken out again as the Touareg tribesman fight the Government forces for the right to their homeland which is being sold off to the foreign investors for itas rich mineral wealth.

The group saw remote desert villages with no medical aid whatsoever, and people forced to walk for sometimes many days to reach a tiny waterhole. Education is almost non-existent and there is no social welfare at all.

In Bilma, a crossroads town with roads leading south to Nigeria and north to Libya, Gavin came across a small hospital which had a few staff but absolutely no drugs or facilities of any kind. There was not even any soap. UNICEF had delivered some sacks of dried milk powder and, bizarrely, peanut butter but otherwise there was no outside evidence that this was even a medical facility.

The group donated their first aid kits, and the doctors were in tears. Back in the UK, Gavin initiated an emergency meeting and proposed an initial aid package to go immediately to Niger. Our contacts there, Souleymane Icha and Dr Ahmed Dangana, received the money and drove to Niamey (the capital) to buy boxes of medicines which were duly delivered. Such is the difficulty of travel in this region that it took days to achieve even this small delivery.
Further deliveries were made and amazingly the local UNICEF office heard about our efforts and made a concerted effort to provide emergency supplies on a far larger scale. Within 6 months of our initial support, the hospital was provided with all manner of equipment.

Sadly the hospital now works as a port of call for the wounded, homeless and injured who have suffered from the recent war in northern Niger. The French Red Cross is one of the few aid agencies allowed into the area and clearly it is very unstable and unsafe. Souleymane is working to assist the efforts of his countrymen in Agadez and Dr Ahmed Dangana is now in the desert running field clinics. MM is no longer able to help but we look to continue our work in the future.