KENYA – Flying Doctor Project in Northern Kenya
Mission Air Fellowship (MAF) was founded 75 years ago, in 1945. They currently operate a fleet of 130 light aircraft in some 25 countries, flying doctors, teachers, and aid workers to over 1,650 remote destinations. Their aircraft land in jungles, swamps and on mountain tops, overcoming immense physical barriers to alleviate human suffering, but with this come high operating and maintenance costs.
CURE is a medical NGO based at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. They fund medical services and healing for children with treatable conditions in remote area.
Our funds will allow MAF to work together with CURE, providing a series of flights to bring medical services to remote communities in rural Kenya, including the communities of Bura, Garissa, Marsabit, Dalkana, Loyenglani and Baragoi.
Funding MAF one to two-hour flights can bring CURE Doctors to these remote areas, replacing an overland journey of up to five days on dangerous dirt tracks where bandits are known to operate. Without the use of MAF, CURE is unlikely to undertake any of these activities.
Once-a-month flights to these regions will bring CURE Doctors, physiotherapists, and orthopaedic technicians to rural Kenya. Some 70% of the medical staff involved are Kenyans, helping their own people. Each programme they run benefits up to 400 patients with conditions from clubfoot to congenital defects. Less able-bodied people in these impoverished areas are frequently seen as a curse and a huge financial burden, and as a result they are often abandoned and left to die. With treatment they and their families can better earn a living so the whole community benefits from CURE’s work.
Our funds will provide several hours flying time for MAF aircraft, flying CURE medical teams to a series of four-day outreach projects in a Cessna 208 from Nairobi to Northern Kenya and back again. The particular MAF flights that we will fund are anticipated to directly, or indirectly, benefit some 800 people, helping to change their lives.
Our involvement will start in earl 2021. So funds for this Project will be transferred to MAF in December 2020, so if you wish to donate to this Project please do so by 01 December 2020.