Tackling Rural Healthcare Challenges

 When you imagine thousands of sick and hurt people lined up in the pre-dawn hours, asleep on queues and traveling hundreds of kilometers to receive medical help, you probably of thinking of healthcare in rural Africa. That scene plays out very often when thousands of people travel to receive care from free medical camps. Ordinary Touch Volunteers, a Community Based organization that provides free medical care to people in remote, underserved locations knows this better. Originally founded to, among other things, provide primary care to remote regions in Matungu Sub-county, OT now travels across the expansive Kakamega County hosting clinics for people in rural areas where, increasingly, hospitals are closing and access to health care can be hard to find.

 

Ordinary Touch Volunteers was originally founded to provide support to the local communities in the areas of agriculture and educational support. After quickly realizing that economic empowerment is not achievable without good health, it incorporated healthcare as one of its major objectives. Now, OTV partners with likeminded local and international organizations and well-wishers to conduct free medical camps so as to take the load off the rural hospitals by targeting preventative health.

 

The free medical camps provides screening for most diseases. The patients are then referred to the hospitals for early intervention. The volunteers at OTV are comprised of both retired and active healthcare workers, healthcare administration professionals, Dietitians, etc. OTV also provides a range of management and technology assistance to local hospitals to help them stay open.