Poole Hospital's healing hand of friendship (From Bournemouth Echo)

Poole Hospital's healing hand of friendship

7:50pm Sunday 19th April 2009

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POOLE Hospital is extending the hand of international friendship to one of the poorest parts of Africa by sending over members of staff to offer basic training for nurses, midwives and doctors.

The link with the hospital in the town of Wau, Southern Sudan, will be officially launched at 6pm on Thursday in St Mary’s Church, Longfleet Road, when members of the public will have the chance to hear how they can help.

They will also be able to meet members of an advance party that has just returned from the war-ravaged country, led by former national Chief Nurse Dame Yvonne Moores, who is now on Poole Hospital’s board.

“The Royal College of Nursing at Poole was really keen to twin with somewhere in Africa.

“We put out lots of feelers and discovered that the Isle of Wight is twinned with Juba in Southern Sudan. They immediately said that Wau desperately needed some help,” explained Dame Yvonne. “Clearly there’s a need in a lot of places in Africa, but there’s nothing quite as bad as Southern Sudan.

“It’s a chaotic country with no roads. Its airports are strips of desert and people are fed by the World Food Programme.

“Tropical diseases there are absolutely dire – malaria, cholera and guinea worm, which gets into your intestine and kills you.”

Sudan was torn apart by civil war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian south until a peace deal in 2005. The south, which has around 10 million inhabitants, will be given a vote on full independence in 2011.

Dame Yvonne travelled to Sudan with two doctors, one an expert in child health; a nurse midwife, and the matron for emergency services at Poole. They spent a week at Wau Hospital.

“What we saw was just awful. They don’t even have oxygen,” she said.

“There were two women requiring caesarean section and they had to select which one should go first because they only had one set of instruments.

“Three doctors there are fantastic and so committed to their people, but there’s no real nursing in the hospital.”

Dame Yvonne is haunted by the memory of a child who was unable to move as he lay dying of malnutrition. His eyes followed me and pleaded with me.

“We came back emotionally drained. I have worked in Uganda, Zimbabwe and the South African townships and I have never seen anything so harrowing.”

The project will be financed through fundraising and the hospital will be sending regular packages of equipment.

“If we can raise some money in the next few months, I’m anticipating we’ll be sending more people out there in September. We’re there for the long haul.”

Dame Yvonne added: “I will talk to any group, anywhere, any time, about the Poole African Link. I can show them what difference we can make.”

Cheques can be made out to ‘Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - Africa Trust Fund’ and sent to Hilary Fenton-Harris, Poole Africa Link Co-ordinator, Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Churchfield House, Longfleet Rd, Dorset BH15 2JB.

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