The film features Moses Kabba, the Kambia Appeal Project Manager in Sierra Leone, as well as Charles and Abass who also help look after visitors from the UK at the Appeal’s house.

Charles and Abass - Sierra Leone from James Dowling on Vimeo.

If you are planning a fundraising event and wish to encourage friends and family to make donations to The Kambia Appeal, you can create your own dedicated page with our online-giving partner BMYCHARITY.COM.  This is a secure, free facility that does not take a percentage of funds raised for admin costs or charge us a monthly subscription (unlike most sites).  To find out more and to see recent examples of fundraising events, click here.

Maternal Health Training Programme

£120,000 over three years has been awarded to The Kambia Appeal from the International Health Link Funding Scheme run jointly by The British Council and the Tropical Health and Education Trust to fund training programmes to improve all aspects of maternal healthcare provision for staff at the Kambia Hospital and at the health centres throughout the district.

The three-year project, consisting of visits to Kambia by small groups of medical personnel from the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will provide training for a wide range of Kambian health workers, with the aim to improve local maternal and child health skills.

The programme will provide:

15 Community Health Officers with training in emergency obstetric care, vacuum extraction and basic surgical skills

57 Maternal and Child Health Aides with annual training in basic maternal health care and adult and neonatal resuscitation

40 Voluntary Nursing Aides with annual training in basic nursing and adult resuscitation

10 hospital staff with training in Ultra Sound Scanner skills

8 hospital staff with annual training in operating theatre skills and management

2 Anaesthetic nurses with annual skills updates and training

Basic medical equipment, including vacuum extraction and delivery kits, surgical sets and training models

The grant covers airfares, travel visas, inoculations and accommodation for UK medics travelling to Kambia, and training materials, travel and subsistence for all Kambia trainees.

Find out more about the Kambia-Gloucestershire Health Link

Motorbike Ambulances

£45,000 over three years has been awarded by The Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation in support of The Kambia Appeal’s emergency transportation link for pregnant women using motorbike ambulances.  The grant enables us to purchase five additional vehicles to add to the six that are already saving lives in Kambia.  The funding also covers the running costs for all the vehicles for the next three years, as well as a comprehensive training programme for the motorbike ambulance drivers.

Click here to find out more about our Transportation Project

Our sincere thanks to everyone who has made this possible - Ben at Keith Gott, Grant at Signs Express in Cardiff, Polly and everyone who organised and took part in the Palm Wine fundraising evening last year, and Martin Smith.

The Land Rover was packed into its container along with school text books and an ultra sound scanning machine donated by Cheltenham General Hospital and left the UK on 12 October.  It is now being used to transport doctors and medical staff from the UK from Freetown to Kambia, and will be used as a maternity bus to help high-risk pregnant women get to the Kambia hospital.

Following the recent evaluation of the work of The Kambia Appeal in December 2008, a full-scale needs assessment was carried out in June this year to find out how we can better direct our support to the priority needs of the maternal and child health system in Kambia. Richard Kerr-Wilson, David Holmes and Sarah Williams of the Tropical Health and Education Trust spent ten days in Sierra Leone meeting local Kambia health staff, community members and Ministry of Health officials in Freetown. The outcome of their visit is a road map for The Appeal to follow in the coming years.

The needs assessment identified the following projects for us to achieve:

Find our more about the events of the day here