Real Medicine Inc

Earthquake Relief, Integrative Primary Health Care - Pisco, Peru

RMF's Childhood Malnutrition Eradication Initiative has the largest field presence of any NGO working in malnutrition in the region, a result of strong partnerships with government, NGOs, businesses, and most importantly, local communities. Into its third year, our program continues to go strong. Our team of 60 Community Nutrition Educators (CNEs) and 6 District Coordinators is covering enormous ground every week across 5 districts and 600 villages in Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh carries India's highest malnutrition burden, with 60% of its children under 5 malnourished - approximately 6 million children whose futures are at risk. Our strategy continues to be closing the gap between the resources available and the families who need them by focusing on the basics of malnutrition awareness, identification, treatment, and prevention and inserting simple, but innovative technologies and practices.

After a full review of our processes and data collection systems from the first year of the program we introduced new, more streamlined and intuitive reporting formats in order to ease reporting for our staff and facilitate their counseling. This positioned our team to be ready to integrate more advanced mobile phone reporting technology into the program. With the increased accuracy of our reporting, we are now very well positioned to analyze our data quickly to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of malnutrition in our target districts.

Real Medicine Foundation, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of South Sudan, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP, WHO, St. Mary’s Hospital Juba Link, Isle of Wight, CIDA, and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and in partnership with and with financial support from World Children’s Fund, has established South Sudan’s first ever accredited College of Nursing and Midwifery. The consortium aims to provide a scalable working model for this college that offers a 3 year diploma for Registered Nursing and Midwifery and is envisioned to be extended to other strategic locations within the newly independent country of South Sudan. This graduated level of nurses and midwives aims at filling the gap of professional skilled care services, destroyed as a result of the more than two decades of civil strife and war.

During their training, students serve as staff in the outlying primary health care clinics and primary health care units in Munuki, Nyakuron, and Kator as well as the Juba Teaching Hospital. The immediate population in Juba and surrounding areas, estimated at 500,000 are direct and immediate beneficiaries of this newly qualified health care staff. Upon graduation, nurses and midwives will return to their home states to work for at least two years to serve the population of South Sudan. Our first class of newly minted nurses and midwives will graduate in 2013. The college accepts applicants from all 10 states to optimize the distribution of newly qualified health care personnel.
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When the Kenyan refugees arrived at the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in 2008, there was very little support in terms of school fees for their children and there was no provision for a nursery school at the settlement.
Real Medicine Foundation stepped forward in collaboration with the UNHCR and Ugandan Office of the Prime Minister to establish a school-support program to cover fees and supplies for nursery, primary and secondary school children of the Kenyan refugee community at Kiryandongo. Students now study comfortably without concern of their future because their school fees are paid and scholastic materials such as books, pens, and pencils are covered.    Funding also includes the purchase of medicine and supplies for the settlement's health clinic, and the funding of a new Vocational Training Center.
 
Real Medicine Foundation also supports the funding of a Orphanage and Boarding School in Tororo, Uganda called the Mama Kevina School. This school is a secondary school program that caters to orphans and poor students.

Project Goal: To improve the quality and sustainability of medical and surgical services provided in the Juba Teaching Hospital.

Juba Teaching Hospital is the only referral hospital in the whole country which is located in Juba city, Central Equatoria State. With estimated population of 9.58 million basing on annual population growth of 3% from population census conducted in 2008 and lack of proper functioning primary health care facilities upcountry, many South Sudanese have nowhere to go to but to this national referral hospital which is now overwhelmed due to high patients turn over. Military and police hospitals, if any, are non-functional country wide, forcing soldiers and officers to share the limited facilities with civilians.

Juba Teaching Hospital is directly funded by the central government through the national Ministry of Health with support from Real Medicine Foundation (RMF), MMI/WCF, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UN agencies and other NGOs. However with support from UN agencies and NGOs, the hospital is still not well equipped and still lacking basic medical suppliers to deliver quality services to the people.

Background of Vocational Training Institue

This program is part of the economic component of RMF’s overall humanitarian vision, the ‘focus on the person as a whole’. The longer term vision for this vocational training center is to be one of several models for income generating opportunities for the populations we are supporting around the world so they eventually can be self-sufficient again.

In April 2011, RMF initiated the Panyadoli Vocational Training Institute (PVTI) at the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement after being presented by the refugee community with issues surrounding the lack of skills and vocational training for students graduating from the settlement high school. After researching which skills and programs might provide the quickest income earning opportunities for the students and the most economic investment requirements for RMF, and with the feedback from the community we narrowed the programs down to two: Hairdressing/ Beauty and Tailoring Training. With the generous support of donors, we renovated a disused building in the camp, purchased tailoring and hairdressing supplies, and funded the salaries of four vocational tutors.

RMF completed its first session of classes in December of 2011, covering both theory and hands-on techniques for hairdressing and tailoring. The vocational institute had its first official graduation ceremony on December 1, 2011 with 30 students graduating; 13 in tailoring and 17 in hair dressing, all with good grades.Our second class of students that started in January of 2012, graduated in October 2012, with a total of 40 students, 24 in hair dressing, and 16 in tailoring, and we have started our third class in January of 2013.

Tailoring Shop Program

The next step of this program is the financial assistance and guidance to PVTI graduates to help them set up their own shops and become self sufficient, while also contributing back to PVTI. In June 2013 we assisted 10 RMF Tailoring Program graduates in establishing their own local Tailoring Shop businesses. RMF supported the purchase of sewing machines, fabric, threads, and other required equipment and furniture, as well as overseeing shop space rental. After three months of successful operation, each tailor will participate in a giving back program through which they will donate 10% of monthly profits to the Panyadoli Vocational Institute that first trained them. In this way, we hope to foster a cycle of improved economic stability and opportunity in the region.