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Annual report 2004
What
is SAIDIA?
SAIDIA is the largest non-government health provider in Samburu District, a rugged region in northern Kenya that is about the size of New Jersey or Wales. We offer health services to 50,000 people, equivalent to one third of the district's overall population.
SAIDIA is a community-based organization that works with the local people to provide basic curative and preventive health services, education bursaries and support for community-led development initiatives. The communities in SAIDIA’s catchment area have hand-built nearly 600km of roads to ensure that SAIDIA’s services can reach them. SAIDIA has sponsored more than 80 students through secondary and tertiary education. Most have returned to Samburu to contribute to their communities as teachers, nurses, civil servants and wildlife managers. |
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Our Goal
To provide assistance for integrated community development in Samburu District, Kenya.
Our Objectives
- To design and initiate a program of community development in collaboration with the people of Samburu District in ways that are at once contemporary and cognizant of cultural dignity.
- To safeguard health and prevent illness though public information, education in health and nutrition, and through access to sanitation and safe water.
- To stock and maintain SAIDIA's medical facilities and to operate a network of mobile health clinics in outlying areas.
- To create an environment that will provide a safe, healthy and happy future for the children of Samburu District.
- To respond to other community needs as they arise.
Samburu District
Samburu District is defined by picturesque grass plains and lowlands interspersed with rocky outcrops and high mountain ranges. This remote, semi-arid region is home to the Samburu ethnic group as well as pockets of Turkana, Somali and Rendille communities. Despite a population of more than 155,000, there are only three semi-urban settlements - Maralal, Wamba and Baragoi. These small towns are only 120-180 km apart. However, it takes about four hours travelling on dirt roads to cover these distances in a vehicle. The majority of the people are pastoralists who are scattered in small or nomadic communities across vast stretches of land. |
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The district is one of the most marginalized in Kenya. It is currently ranked as the second poorest in the country with four out of five people living below the national poverty line of $1 per day. Until recently, Samburu District habitually fell beyond the reach of government development plans. There are no paved roads in the district. Less than 5% of the population has access to electricity. Improvement to livelihoods has been further confounded by frequent cycles of drought and famine.
The Samburu people are semi-nomadic pastoralists who keep goats, sheep, cattle and camels. The men move livestock seasonally to fresh pastures while women and children are becoming more sedentary, living close to the few schools, clinics and development projects that have been established in the district. The Samburu now tend to remain in one community for five to ten years.
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Our History
SAIDIA started in 1985 when the people of Lesirikan, at that time a hamlet of six wooden stores and houses perched on the edge of the El Barta Plains, asked for help. During the 1960s the villagers had built a health clinic constructed with cedar offcuts they had carried on their backs from the top of the Ndoto Mountains. The hope was that if it was there, someone could be persuaded to come and run it. For twenty years it stood empty. Now they could wait no longer, they said. The time had come to hire a nurse and open for business.
One of Lesirikan's sons, Mohamed Lochgan, co-opted three others and responded to this plea. The friends were Mohamed Amin, the late award-winning documentary film maker and news cameraman; Mary Anne Fitzgerald, a bestselling author on African affairs and then a Financial Times correspondent; and Dr Kate Macintyre, a professor of public health administration at Tulane University. Between them they raised sufficient funds to equip and operate a small dispensary And so SAIDIA was born. |
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In co-operation with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, the SAIDIA dispensary treated basic illnesses and ran immunisation and health education programs. Later, mobile units travelled to outlying areas to provide similar care to more remote populations that otherwise would have had to walk up to100 km to get treatment at Lesirikan. In 1988 SAIDIA built a second dispensary at Ngilai in the Mathews Mountains in the west of the district.
Over time, it became apparent that the provision of healthcare was a first vital step in addressing the problems facing the people of Samburu. At the request of the communities, SAIDIA has since diversified from health care into programs in water, livestock, environment and education.
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