Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter. We have spent time gathering together information and stories about the past year of our work. You can download a copy of our annual report from our website.
One of the things that is clear to us is that without your support we couldn't do the work that we do - so thank you for your continued interest and support.
Community Health Africa Trust (CHAT) in based in Nanyuki on the northwest edge of the Mount Kenya National Park. The CHAT team runs regular mobile clinics for healthcare and family planning services reaching out to rural and marginalised communities. Before a clinic arrives in an area, trained community health workers (CHWs) will visit communities and households to let them know that a clinic is due…
Zipporah is a 30 year old farmer who lives with her husband in Kiamariga, Laikipia County, about two hours’ drive from Nanyuki. Zipporah has three children – 12 year old Laban, 6 year old Purity and baby Lydia. She heard about CHAT’s upcoming clinic from a friend who had spoken to a CHW – and she wanted to know more about, and receive, family planning. However, attending the clinic herself would be impossible. She had recently been in a serious accident whilst on a motorbike and was housebound with a broken leg.
So, CHAT’s backpack nurse, Pauline, made a house call – she visited Ziporrah at home and spent time talking her through the available options. Ziporrah chose a 5-year implant and Pauline was able to administer it there and then. This meant that Ziporrah wouldn’t have to attempt the long journey to the nearest hospital that would have been able to help. She remarked, “Currently with our poor economic status, we can’t afford to cater for more children as even the three are a burden to us and that’s why we preferred the 5-year insertion as the most convenient method for us”. She dreams that someday her children will finish their education and will have a brighter future than hers.
Working for the future in Kenya’s National Parks and Reserves
Throughout Kenya there are areas that have been designated as national parks and reserves, areas under threat that need to be preserved for future generations. Through our partners, CHASE Africa is working in two of these vitally important areas – the Mount Kenya National Park and Kakamega Forest National Reserve. Both areas face the consequences of Kenya’s fast population growth – the destruction of habitat and increasing pressure on resources.
There are also issues of poverty that are being addressed through the work that is being done by the mobile clinics that we fund. Free access to family planning opens up previously unavailable choices to women – the opportunity to choose the number of children they have and how close together they will be. Choice is the beginning of breaking the cycle of poverty in which many families in these regions find themselves. And families with choices have better futures – better maternal health and better child health.
By Steve Bown, CHASE Ambassador:
"I have been a professor of medicine at a London teaching hospital for more than 25 years. Over these years I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the way the global environment is being destroyed and degraded by human activity. The climate is changing, forests are disappearing, desertification is overtaking previously fertile land and natural resources (particularly fresh water) are being consumed faster than they can replenish themselves."
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter. We have spent time gathering together information and stories about the past year of our work. You can download a copy of our annual report from 
Throughout Kenya there are areas that have been designated as national parks and reserves, areas under threat that need to be preserved for future generations. Through our partners, CHASE Africa is working in two of these vitally important areas – the Mount Kenya National Park and Kakamega Forest National Reserve. Both areas face the consequences of Kenya’s fast population growth – the destruction of habitat and increasing pressure on resources.
