Donation of Modular Buildings

Posted by Mercy Ships staff on Jan 20, 2012 at 11:07 am

Throughout each field service, Mercy Ships is committed to investing in local health care infrastructure in ways that will continue to have an impact long after the ship leaves. In keeping with this long-term capacity-building strategy, Mercy Ships donated three modular buildings to Rokupa Government Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, at the end of the 2011 Sierra Leone Field Service.

            On 7 December 2011, the buildings, which had been refitted and converted into seven offices, were delivered to premade foundations at their new location, which was chosen in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.

            Rokupa Hospital is a 35-bed facility that serves over 350 surgical patients per year. Formerly, the Outpatient Department at the hospital consisted of a concrete slab in the parking lot covered by plastic tarps and a steel roof. The new buildings will provide a new tuberculosis, leprosy and HIV Outpatient Department and Cholera Treatment Centre, as well as administrative offices and storage space.

            This donation provides the staff at Rokupa with a secure, controlled environment in which to treat outpatients. It is an area that can be permanently set up and maintained, which will save time and allow for safe storage of hospital records and equipment.

            Dr. Matilda King, the representative from Rokupa Government Hospital, was thrilled with the donation. “I want to thank Mercy Ships so much for their generous donation,” she said. “I hope the buildings will be in the same shape when Mercy Ships returns to Sierra Leone!”

January 2012

Story by Catherine Cooper

Edited by Nancy Predaina

Photos by Debra Bell

Comments: