Shocking photos were sent through to Jess on 1st May 2020 showing villages in Uranga, where many of our project activities operate, completely underwater. In a matter of days 750 displaced people quickly turned into 7,000 and went on to peak at over 12,000. “Lake Victoria is vomiting and vomiting,” reported Mordecai our Manager on the ground. With thousands relocated to primary school camps, Positive Aid rallied to help those most vulnerable - pregnant women, mothers and children. They were sleeping together in cramped cold conditions, receiving tiny handouts from the Kenyan government that ran out as lines of kids made their way up to the front.
By launching a social media campaign, aimed at our regular donors and members of the general public, Positive Aid raised $3,000 in a matter of weeks. This helped to fund food, soap for sanitising, and face masks for combatting disease. We were able to call on our team already on the ground in Uranga to get these items directly to the people needing them. At the same time, making sure
anti-retroviral treatments continued for people with HIV/AIDS and mosquito nets and coils were placed in the schools for preventing malaria. The floods essentially laid a breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes to create an outbreak of this disease which predominantly kills children under five – we bought and hand-delivered mosquito nets to every single pregnant and breast-feeding woman in the four primary school camps so that they could sleep safely.
We began to receive amazing photos from Mordecai of kids with our blankets, nets and porridge flour. “Thanks indeed you have helped our people,” said Mordecai over a broken Skype call. We cannot thank our Positive Aid community enough for working with us to protect the world’s most vulnerable people at this very tough time.
Comments