"I am just a medical student. How can I help people living in extreme poverty?"

“I am just a medical student. How can I help people living in extreme poverty?”<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />   by John Daniel Kelly- Princeton Chemistry Department Newsletter ’07 submission For the first several weeks of my Global Health Fellowship in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Sierra Leone, these thoughts drifted through my mind. I lived in a war-ravaged capital city lacking electricity while treating countless patients for malaria. During that time, I realized that the best way to help Sierra Leoneans was with a more sustainable contribution than my medical efforts.  Fortunately, my experience was coordinated through a fellow medical student who was also a refugee from Sierra Leone. He introduced me to a Sierra Leonean doctor who is also passionate about helping his people. Together we stumbled upon communities of amputees and families of severely malnourished children crying for help. Their cries for help led us to ask how. Eventually, solutions materialized from their answers and projects were developed and implemented through a newly-created Sierra Leonean Non-Governmental Organization and United States Non-Profit Foundation.  In September 2006, we decided to tackle a problem in the following two most vulnerable groups of Sierra Leone: Children under age 5 and war-disabled communities. Since then, they have grown and evolved into the following current programs. In children under 5, severe malnutrition is the problem being tackled. Working toward its resolution, we run a district-wide community outreach program and therapeutic feeding centre. The outreach program involves community sensitization, nutrition surveillance in both villages and primary health units, and retrieval system for identified children as well as their guardians. The current therapeutic feeding centre is a medical unit providing free health services to WHO-classified severely malnourished children while educating their guardians. Since our community outreach program involves 82,400 children under 5, we have decided to build a dedicated medical facility in order to accommodate for an increased patient capacity of up-to 200 severely malnourished children per month. With a program integrating clinical medicine, public health, education, and agriculture and established in collaboration with UNICEF, WFP, and the Ministry of Health, we can reduce severe malnutrition by 80% within the next 5 years in Port Loko District. In war-disabled communities, empowerment of amputated individuals is the problem being tackled. Working toward its resolution, we run an empowerment program amongst 9 communities in Kono – home of the "Blood Diamonds." The program supports their self-proclaimed most pressing needs, which ubiquitously includes food security as well as access to health care and child education. In order to provide food security, we support their community-driven micro-agriculture project in which they have 155 acres of farmland and grow rice. In order to provide access to health care and child education, we have plans to build a medical facility and secondary school with technical training institute. Since receiving a gift from the chiefs of 41 acres, we are proceeding with the site plans. Meanwhile, we have begun a monthly-run mobile clinic. On its launch, we encountered 170 patients over two days. With a program integrating health, agriculture, and education and established in collaboration with the US Embassy, Direct Relief International, and the affiliated Sierra Leonean Ministries, we can empower the amputees to become self-reliant within the next 10 years in the Kono District. Poverty reduction is a vast, multi-dimensional dilemma. My focus is “on-the-ground” working with the people and giving them the opportunity to solve their own problems. We are making a sustainable difference in the lives of Sierra Leoneans. For more information, please visit our website:       www.go-act.org