Real Life Stories
NamibiaAdrian Siebo – Enrolled Nurse, Lisikili Clinic, Namibia
Adrian, 24, is currently the only nurse at Lisikili Primary Health Clinic in Kabbe Constituency, Caprivi. There should be two nurses at the clinic but one of the posts is vacant. Annemarie Meyer, our Programme and Policy Manager, met Adrian at his clean, neat clinic in October 2011, after he had finished with the 40 or so patients he had seen that day:
Adrian thinks the drop in cases is due to better education on preventing malaria; people sleeping under mosquito nets and spraying of houses with insecticide; and the availability of effective malaria tests and treatment
Adrian is pictured here with a chalk board he uses to show his catchment area of almost 2,000 people (the furthest home is an 8km walk away) and highlight to everyone the key diseases to beware of – with malaria top of the list. Adrian tells me he is always on the lookout for malaria. Depending on the season he tests between 5-80 people for the disease every month using simple disposable rapid diagnostic test kits. Adrian says these kits are essential to help him identify actual cases of malaria from those with similar symptoms. He was delighted to tell me that he has not had a single confirmed case of malaria at his clinic since April. Even in the peak local malaria season of Feb-April his cases were considerably down on previous years to just 1-3 episodes per month. Adrian thinks the drop in cases is due to better education on preventing malaria; people sleeping under mosquito nets and spraying of houses with insecticide; and the availability of effective malaria tests and treatment.
Adrian might soon be benefitting from two new projects supported by Malaria No More UK in Namibia. The first will be to pilot on-the-job training and support in diagnosing and treating malaria and what to do if it is not malaria. The second will be to support local community health volunteers to help reach out from the clinic and take malaria messages out to the community.
Adrian, and the efforts of frontline health workers like him, plays a critical role in Namibia’s drive to eliminate malaria transmission within its borders by 2020.
Read more about our work in Namibia
More real life stories
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Rob Henchoz
My friend Richard Atherton and I are keen car enthusiasts and rally drivers. We decided to raise money for Malaria No More UK because having lived in Angola and worked on the West coast of Africa we saw the effects of malaria on both locals and expats. The aim to eliminate the disease is clearly achievable with some financial commitment.
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Nadeem and Sarah Javaid
Making a donation through our wedding was an easy way of supporting this effort to make Malaria No More and we hope others will do the same.
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Dinah Hawes
Dinah decided to join the fight against malaria when she saw a Comic Relief programme on TV about the devastating effects of malaria throughout Africa. She was struck by the fact that just £5 is enough to buy, deliver and hang a mosquito net to protect a mother and child from malaria for up to five years.
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Adwoa Pomea
Village farmer Adwoa works hard to harvest maize, cassava and plantain on her land in Ghana, West Africa.
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Doreen Tetteh
New Mum Doreen and her husband live with their six month old baby boy, John, in Ghana, a country where 100% of the population are at risk from malaria.
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Thomas Sandow, Ghanaian Malaria Volunteer, 28
I volunteer with a malaria prevention project in my community, Dromankuma, in Ghana’s Ashanti Region. Volunteering was an easy decision for me: I want to do all I can to help prevent others from going through the pain endured by my two year old daughter Irene when she had severe malaria last year.
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Marta Phillemon
Marta is a young Mum and lives with her family of five in Namibia. Their rural home setting means they are some of the most remote and hardest to reach communities with little access to malaria prevention and treatment support.
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Edward Ahima Botwe
Dad-of-six Edward knows all about the dangers of malaria having seen each of his children suffer from the disease in recent years.
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Mallam Nasiru Abdullai, Deputy Imam of Dromankuma Central Mosque
Mallam Abdullai is the Deputy Imam of a mosque in Dromankuma, Ghana, where the whole population is at risk of malaria. Mallam told us about the important role the Mosque has played as a source of information about malaria.
