Renovating the Nixon Memorial Hospital: Regional Cooperation and Community-Based Public Health
At the onset of the pandemic, it became apparent that activities with our flagship programs – Community Action and Nurturing Opportunities for Women – would need to be put on hold. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t still lean into our values and work with our community partners in other ways.
What we learned from Ebola is that during an epidemic, a community-led public health response is crucial, and three things need to happen to achieve that: having open and honest dialogue with community members, partnering with local institutions and leaders, and of course, being flexible and creative.
“What the [Ebola] epidemic of 2013/2015 showed was an unexpected capacity for communities and responders to figure out jointly the nature of the infection threat, and then to respond practically.”
When the Kailahun District Health Medical Team (DHMT) approached OneVillage Partners with the District COVID Emergency Response Centre (DISCOVERC) about a collaborative project to rehabilitate nurses’ quarters at a local hospital in the town of Segbwema and convert it to a quarantine center, we were thrilled to work with the local actors to assist in an effective COVID-19 response. Leaders and community members from Segbwema were very involved in the planning process and engaged in the process from the beginning and helped us shape our collective goals for the project: to provide immediately accessible and comfortable accommodations for quarantined persons, ensure functional water sanitation facilities, and keep quarantined persons from cross contamination.
OneVillage Partners’ role was to oversee the construction of a functional water and sanitation facility for the building, providing running water for showers and flush toilets for residents. Other partners for the project made improvements to the rooms themselves, and created the framework so that all renovations would be properly maintained and that the persons quarantined would be served with dignity.
Because there were limited quarantine centers in Kailahun District, most people were self-isolating in their homes or in informal community quarantine areas. Healthcare staff and contact tracers were therefore having to travel many hours to reach isolated persons and follow up with them to give care and make sure they were following regulations. With a more central quarantine center located at the Nixon Memorial Hospital in Segbwema, a quarantined person can more easily be monitored. Furthermore, because the newly renovated quarantine center is comfortable, people are more incentivized to admit themselves.
The converted quarantine center has 24 bedrooms and located inside a beautiful hospital compound. The Nixon Memorial Hospital is strategically located in Segbwema – easily accessible from the DHMT in Kailahun and easy for people to reach there from all over the district. It serves the town of Segbwema, a population of 17,000, in addition to being a referral hospital for many of OneVillage Partners’ community partners.
OneVillage Partners agreed to take part in this project because we knew it was important to partner with local institutions for an effective COVID-19 response for everyone in the area. Please lend your support for the Nixon Memorial Hospital project and community-led responses by donating today.