Tot Saved At Deaths Door

EXTREME poverty brought this two month old Rwandan tot to deaths door – but a new health project funded by Irish people kept her alive.

Little Kwizera Rongin (4 months) had pneumonia - which is the biggest killer of children under five worldwide - and her young mother Clondette (27) feared it would kill her child.

“I was very scared,” she told The Star at her home in the poverty filled Mayaba village in Nyaruguru about 200km south west from the Rwandan capital Kigali.

Clondette's horror occurred just last week after the child developed a high fever and wouldn't feed.

After a few days she decided to go to the village community health worker, Cansilde Kampogo, who is one of 6,186 community workers trained with funds from Concern and US Aid to treat children for killer diseases like malaria and pneumonia.

“The child's breathing was way above normal so I gave her antibiotics, as well as drugs for diarrhea,” said the health worker.

The patients make a contribution pf 12 cent to the health worker to cover drug costs.

The child survived despite getting late treatment, and was happily feeding in his mums arms when visited by The Star and Concern staff yesterday.

“He made a huge recovery and is much better, thanks to the treatment,” said the relieved mum.

Some of her other children were coughing with a bronchial infection during our visit, but Clondette simply hasn't the means to bring them to a doctor.

Since Concern trained community members to become health workers and advisers in 2007 mothers like Clondette have tried to improve their poor living conditions to prevent children getting pneumonia and malaria.

This includes washing their ragged clothes more regularly, making children wash their hands regularly, boiling water for drinking and preparing more nutritious food.

Clondette said her family now sleep under mosquito nets to prevent them getting malaria, which kills one in six Rwandan children every year.

She also explained how her husband often goes without an evening meal because their small harvest does not produce enough food for the whole family.

Clondette and her family are so poor that they rarely ever eat meat.

To earn money to buy more food at markets her husband does public work as part of a government social welfare programme, for which he gets a payment of €26 a month.

He also tries to work on other fields for around 65 cent a day.

Community health worker Chantal Mukarubuga in the Nkima village said many mothers still carry sick children on their backs while they harvest their fields, because they have nobody to babysit them, and no money to pay them if they do.

She also said deaths from malaria in her region have dramatically fell since community health workers like her started to successfully treat children.

Old rituals like drinking banana beer and using herbal remedies to kill malaria have been replaced with medical treatment.

“Before I was trained there were so many cases of malaria,” said Chantal.

In the last 12 months 30,121 children under five were treated for pneumonia and 191,296 for malaria in Concerns six Rwandan districts by the community health workers they trained, and the recovery rate was 96 per cent.

Concern are currently in the process of providing villages in their six districts with rapid diagnostic tests, that after a simple test can tell in minutes if someone has malaria.