Two nursing students from Trinity Western University have raised more than $6,700 in a GoFundMe campaign for the rural Kenyan hospital where they are volunteering for the summer.
Johanna Ens-MacIver and Emma Neufeld are third-year students at TWU who wrote that they felt called to volunteer at Kenya over their 2019 summer break.
They headed to Limuru, a small tea farming town outside Nairobi and close to Africa’s Rift Valley.
“During our volunteer shifts thus far, we have come to realize the severe lack of resources within the local hospital,” they wrote on their GoFundMe page. “This small hospital has an amazing staff of local nurses, midwives, and doctors who work extremely hard to treat the ongoing heavy flow of patients. However, this can become difficult when faced with a great lack of medical supplies.”
The duo created their fundraising project on May 14 with the goal of raising $8,000 to buy an array of medical supplies including IV sets, soap and hand sanitizer, stethoscopes, blood pressure monitors, surgical tools, and mattresses and linens.
A small amount of the money raised will also go towards the community of about 70 families that lives in Limuru, the duo said.
A drought in Kenya is hitting the income of the farmers around Limuru, who make about $1 per kilogram of tea picked, said Ens-MacIver and Neufeld.
“Please know all donations will go extremely far in helping the medical staff of Limuru Hospital as well as assisting the farming community in this time of drought,” they wrote.
They money will go towards purchasing food for local families.
The total shopping list for Limuru includes:
• Blood pressure monitors
• Stethoscopes
• Gloves
• Syringes, cannulas, and needles
• Catheters
• Gauze, sterile dressing kits, and tape
• Glucose monitors
• IV sets
• Swabs, applicators, specimen collectors
• Soap and hand sanitizer
• Non-stick sterile gauze
• Surgical tools, sutures kits, and staples
• Thermometers
• Condoms
• Medical supply carts
• Antibiotics ointments
• Medications
• Mattresses and linens
• Pulse oximeter
• Scrubs, medical gowns, aprons, masks, and hair nets
• Eye protection
• Diapers and female hygiene pads
• Fetal stethoscopes
• Fetal and infant tubing
• Cord clamps