Photo | Thomas LeeContributing photojournalist Thomas Lee recently visited the Global Medical Relief Program: Health Outreach and Peer Education (HOPE). His photos, along with Executive Director Victor Roy’s history of the organization, tell the story of HOPE Center.

Joseph Achana, a community leader and Rotarian in Ghana, believed strongly that the villages surrounding the town of Ho needed access to more quality health services and programs. For many villagers, walking to the town was the only way to be seen by a nurse. Little outreach could be conducted by the Ghana Health Services (the government body in charge of health services) because no outpost existed near the more rural areas. Most existing government facilities provided low-quality service from dilapidated facilities.

Upon meeting students from Northwestern University leading an organization called GlobeMed, Joseph and the students realized a collective dream: building a health center that would not only provide quality services to villagers, but also launch preventative programs where outreach would be emphasized. Over the course of two years, students raised over $20,000 USD and worked with Joseph to support the construction of the Center. Through a partnership with the Ghana Health Services in which GHS provides human resources and staffing, the HOPE Center has now taken off since its opening in April of 2007. For example, the head nurse, Margaret Asante, leads a team of three other nurses. The HOPE Center provides immunizations, malaria bed nets, other basic medications, and is now initiating a set of community-based nutrition programs to supplement its work.

Mouse-over thumbnails to view enlarged images.

Now, almost one year after the opening of the Center, GlobeMed is preparing to send Colleen Fant, the current president of its Northwestern chapter, to work with the staff at the HOPE Center on a full-time basis for one year in order to continue to advance Center’s goal of providing high-quality services and preventative health programs.

Executive Director, Victor Roy

GlobeMed
PO Box 292
Evanston, IL 60204

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 10:40 am and is filed under Photo Essays, Organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.