Hero of the Week

Community health worker, Ramprasad, giving soap and masks to a young girl.

Community health worker volunteer, Ramprasad ("Ram"), is our hero of the week! Ram ensures that children in his village have access to health care, no matter the obstacles.

In remote Gorkha, Nepal, where he lives, Ram has been providing health education for women, children, and families for years. Ram has also built 25 latrines to improve sanitation for the community. And he's been providing soap and masks to families in the community for COVID-19 prevention, thanks to the generosity of HealthEd Connect donors.

Recently, a child needed to go to the hospital, but it was a four hour walk. The child did not have a father or a family member strong enough to make the trek. So, Ram volunteered to carry the child the four hours to reach the small hospital in town. Upon arriving, the hospital referred the child to a larger hospital in Kathmandu for treatment, several more hours away. Ram escorted the child the rest of the way to Kathmandu to seek treatment.  Ram went to extraordinary lengths to help this child, and he would do it all again for anyone in need!

These are the types of actions that make our community health worker colleagues so amazing. Their drive to ensure people in their communities are given the best care is unmatched!

Health, Education, and Empowerment

Health worker, Joyce, assists community client with mask placement.

A recent message from the Kafwa community health volunteers in Mapalo, Zambia, showed the amazing impact made by donors like you in response to rising COVID-19 numbers.

"We have noted that it is of great importance that we help in educating our clients in mindset change to live well in this new normal. Our visit was not short of sensitizing clients about how they need cope with the current change in our usual way of life. This saw us distributing face masks, tablets of soap, a basin and Jar to helping them maintain the hand washing and masking.

Our clients...expressed gratitude toward the items received as this is making them feel part of the community as with the struggling way of life its difficult to access soap at the expense of buying food."

Because of your generosity, clients no longer need to choose between food and soap. They were able to receive everything necessary for a hand-washing station and a mask sewn by the health workers. Thank you for all you do to empower women and children during this pandemic!

Preparing for Another Wave

Health worker, Sangeeta Poudel, providing soap to mother and daughter in Biratnagar, Nepal. 

For several months, the communities and nations where our health worker colleagues serve were reporting little to no new cases of COVID-19. We were elated to keep seeing this positive trend! But that changed last month. Cases are on the rise again, some at their peak, and the new highly transmissible strain of the virus was identified in South Africa – gateway to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. We sounded the alarm bells, and supporters like you were quick to respond, generously supporting our appeal to re-stock our health workers with supplies for COVID-19 prevention (more soap, supplies for masks, wash basins, etc.). Thanks to your generosity, we were able to send $10,750 specifically for COVID-19 prevention last week to our three community schools and health worker colleagues, serving 56 communities, empowering people with resources and education to stay healthy. Your support saves lives! We’re hopeful that this year COVID-19 will be stamped out globally! 

For more information about COVID-19 global tracking, Reuters is one of several credible sites we follow: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/

See data for the countries where we work: Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Zambia, and Nepal.