by: Etelka Lehoczky
A lot of babies are born at the Alokpatsa Community-Based Health Planning and Services compound, a health center in eastern Ghana. And for years, a lot of those babies were born in the dark.
“We didn’t have any power. What we had were lamps and candles,” says Nelson Addy, a former facility team leader at the center in the Oti region. “When the woman delivering had a tear and we wanted to suture, we found it very difficult. We had to strain our eyes with our phone [flashlights] to do the suturing.”
That changed when the Rotary Club of Accra-Spintex, of the Greater Accra region of Ghana, installed a new solar power system at the center. The project included a complete rewiring and, crucially, plenty of lights.
One of the first mothers to give birth after the installation was so delighted with the upgrades, Addy says, she used “Solar” as the name for one of her children. “It felt like it was all planned by nature for the child to see the first light installed in Alokpatsa,” he says.
Via Rotary.org
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