You may have read about some of the incredible things SolarAid ambassador Keith Neal has got up to in our previous blogs. Well, today we have another amazing story regarding one of his solar inspired projects in Sierra Leone.
Bo District, the second largest District in Sierra Leone, was hit by Ebola in June 2014. Up until January this year the area had reported 314 cases. It was around October 2014 that Keith first got in touch with a plan to help the sufferers in this region. By helping get lights to a number of other communities across Africa, Keith knew that solar lights would offer the medical teams a welcome opportunity to continue to work after dark and dramatically increase the number of people they could identify and treat.
Thanks to Keith’s hard work we were able to distribute 100 GreenLight Planet solar lights to the region. The District Health Management Team from Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation confirmed that 15 Chiefdom taskforces, 10 burial teams, 5 Emergency Obstetrics and Neonatal Care Centres, 5 Pillars for Ebola Response and the Central Command Centre were now all able to work around the clock treating those in the stricken district.
The Government of Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation wrote: “SolarAid [with help from Keith Neal] donated one hundred portable solar lights to the District Ebola Response. The donation was very timely and contributed greatly to the control of the spread of Ebola in the district. The lights are very useful for our burial teams when they are working at night. Our Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care Centers use these lights to work at night especially in the labor room when delivering pregnant women. The chiefdom Taskforces uses them to conduct meetings at night.”
We want to express our huge thanks to Keith for his great efforts in helping control the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone, with solar lights!