- The general medicine clinic
- The gynaecology unit
- The dental practice
- The AMPO rehab centre
- The AMPO optical unit
The general medicine clinic
Dr. Denis Yameogo
The clinic started operating in November 1998 and is located together with the gynaecology unit and the dental practice in a building at the AMPO annexe orphanage for girls.
The clinic is open to the public and treats people in need who have no financial means to pay for medical treatment. A nominal charge of 15 cents per treatment is all that is required, apart from a great deal of patience because the waiting time can be several hours. Otherwise medicines and in many cases operations or other interventions are free. The clinic is led by Medical Officer, Denis Yameogo,. Part of his team is made up of former AMPO children who trained as nurses or medical assistants and now have the opportunity to gain practical experience. The clinic has three consulting rooms and a laboratory, a gynaecology room and the dental practice. There is a pleasant waiting room for the patients, mostly mothers with small children. When things get busy, they have to queue in the street outside the clinic. We are currently treating about 40,000 cases per year. This is a huge number of people who can be helped, because many families cannot afford to buy even a single tablet. So many of them come a long distance, some covering many kilometres barefoot at night to reach the gates of this unique facility in Burkina Faso in the morning.
The Katrin Rohde Foundation provides the financial means to support the medical clinic.
Vaccination
The gynaecology unit
The gynaecology unit was opened in June 2000. It is open to the public and treats women and girls without financial means from the surroundings as well as patients referred from P.P. Filles counselling service. The costs for treatment and medicine are minimal, in keeping with standard AMPO practice and depending on the situation of each patient.
The gynaecology unit also provides preventive screening tests for the girls in the AMPO orphanage.
Consulting times are two afternoons a week. The doctor is a gynaecologist from a renowned clinic in Ouagadougou, working to support the poor people in the city.
The dental practice
Equipped with a special dental chair suitable for use in the tropics, continuing to operate for a few minutes after a power failure, the practice is an added feature of the clinic complex. It opened in 2005. The practice is open for treatment four times a week for a small fee. Of course, AMPO children are treated free. There is also a facility for African dentists to manufacture dentures. Dr Vorauer, seen here with Sanata from AMPO-MIA, visits the practice once a year.
When Sanata completed her training as a dental assistant, she did her practical training with Dr Vorauer in Salzburg and returned home with valuable experience.
Dr Vorauer with Sanata from the MIA Home, a trained dental assistant who also did her practical training in Salzburg.
The AMPO rehab centre
In front of the gates of the rehab centre
The centre is yet another feature of the AMPO general medical clinic. It was built in 2009 on a site just opposite the AMPO clinic, to treat and accommodate physically handicapped children and children with severe burns. In a separate enclosed space we have set up a sleeping area for up to six small rehab patients. The children spend up to three months there being treated as in-patients. Our physiotherapist Roc works with them devotedly every day.
All of these cases are children from very poor families, in urgent need of intensive, professional treatment to put them on their feet again. Part of the treatment also involves a great deal of attention and high-quality nourishment, all of which is very expensive in Burkina Faso. There is no health insurance and social services do not pay either.
In addition to the in-patients, the centre also treats out-patients. This costs about 76 cents per child and €1.53 per adult. News of such reasonably priced treatment soon spreads and so the number of patients is constantly growing.
The land we purchased for the rehab centre was big enough for us to build another two consulting rooms and a large waiting room. Head of the bandaging unit is now Adama Sebré, who grew up in the AMPO orphanage. He treats everything from burns, eczema and snake bites to accident-related injuries. In Africa open wounds require particularly intensive treatment because what they really need for them to heal is air, which is not an option due to the many flies. If they are completely covered, especially during the rainy season, simple wounds can develop into serious tropical ulcers. Adama Sebré knows all about such problems and is very successful in treating his patients.
The AMPO optical unit
The AMPO optical unit
Isabel Signes from „Opticians without borders“ attended the opening of the optical unit in December 2009. The new unit was incorporated into the site of the rehab centre. Optical equipment and a great deal of additional hardware for making spectacles were donated from Spain. Two of the AMPO nurses spent a week together with opticians and ophthalmologists to learn how to make glasses to help people in need in Ouagadougou. The centre will now be managed by a former AMPO orphan who is now a qualified male nurse. Poor people can come here to have their glasses adjusted or to obtain new glasses. Thanks to the large quantity of spectacles donated from Germany, there is sure to be a frame to suit everyone.
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