german
frenchSponsors of the project
St Elizabeth Clinic Serving the Poor in Abomey-Calavi
St Elizabeth Dispensary is a health centre run by African Roman Catholic nuns based in Calavi, in a slum area of the coastal town of Cotonou. In recent years this area has witnessed a population explosion raising the number of residents to over 360,000. This is mainly due to the influx of people from the north of the country looking for jobs in the coastal region. It is here that Sister Eugénie Adjolohoun and her small team are looking after between 1,000 and 1,500 patients a month, most of them children and adolescents. In addition to basic health services the dispensary also provides counselling on AIDS, family planning, education for health as well as education for mothers.
Until recently, as a makeshift arrangement, the health centre had been housed in some rooms of the nuns' compound. For a long time already this had not been meeting the demands of the growing number of patients. Therefore a new clinic was built, cofunded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. As this covered only three-quarters of the total of 170,000 Euros needed, donors contributed the remaining 42,000 Euros.
Some of these donors are One-World-Shop Bergheim, also a small group of friends living in the Bergheim region, further the Foundation "Children into the Centre", as well as the Catholic Parish of St Boniface of Renningen.
In addition to this, aa/D (Germany) would like to continue their contribution amounting to some 3,000 Euros per annum in order to buy medicines. Most of the slum dwellers do not have the money to pay for medication and treatment.
Therefore we ask for your continued support of the poor living in the slums as well as for the nuns who work to help them.