Jackie Church, head of The Gambian Longevity through Village Enterprises (GLOVE) a UK registered charity, wednesday February 8, presented Bandages, wound dressings, surgical tapes, cotton wool, sterile dressings, hand sanitizers and sterile gloves to victims of the Kitty accident currently admitted at The Edward Francis Small hospital in Banjul.
All eight victims have extensive broken lower limbs, seven of them awaiting surgery as their bones are so terribly broken. Five of them have compound fractures meaning their bones have snapped and broken through the skin.
One victim, a 19 year old boy, Alhagie Darboe remains in a coma with a head injury. The bones in both his legs are broken. A fifteen year old girl has both her legs broken. Another victim, a 22 years old who is twenty six weeks pregnant has both bones to her lower right leg broken. Doctors say the baby is fine.
GLOVE also donated lots of strong painkillers as the victims are said to be in terrible pain and the hospital does not have anything stronger than diclofenac, which health workers say is bad for the stomach and can cause ulcer.
When contacted, Jackie Church told The Fatu Network that she was received very well by the victims and their families as well as the Public Relations Officer of The Edward Francis Small hospital. She said one Dr Njie is the surgeon looking after the victims along with the ward manager Mamu Njie. “They have promised to keep me updated on the progress the patients are making and I will visit again next week with more dressings and bandages”. Jackie said.
The GLOVE project during the Jammeh regime donated over 5 million dalasi worth of medical equipment to Ministry of Health in Banjul, and a huge amount of medical donation to Essau Health centre in the North Bank. The NGO works very closely with the regional director of Health at North Bank as well as with Omar Sey until a new health minister is identified.
GLOVE also works with the department of water resources and supports two community gardens. They renovated eleven hand pumps, provided rural women with milling machines for income generation as well as ploughs for tractors. The project is also said to have built a fence around the water pumps to reduce the competition between animals and humans for water as there were many injuries particularly to woman and children
