ENERGY FOR EMERGENCIES : NDIAO BAMBALY – SENEGAL

About one hour from Kaffrine, reachable through the sunny beaten track that connects the agglomerations of huts of the rural Senegalese provinces, lies the hospital of Ndiao Bambaly, medical center (Poste de santé) located 5 hours from Dakar, which serves 19 Senegalese villages and represents  a key point for many people from Gambia and Casamance.

“A year-long co-planning process”

We were at the Ndiao Bambaly hospital for the first time in February 2019 on the occasion of the first Senegalese edition of the Lightforce project, a Corporate Social Volunteering program supported by the French headquarters of the Salesforce company and its European partners.

Accompanied by our local partner “COMI – Cooperation for the World in Development” and by the medical staff of the Presidium, with the team of corporate volunteers of Lightforce, we had the opportunity to see the true hospitals of the Senegalese rural provinces which are actually small structures mainly off -grids or partially connected to the supply of national electricity which, in addition to exposing them to frequent power drops, does not allow carrying out even the simplest actions in safety.

“Children are born very often in the light of cell phones, power cuts are harmful for the storage of vaccines and medicines in the refrigerator and the sterilization of medical tools is not always possible.”

In February 2020, after numerous e-mails and phone calls with the French team of the Lightforce project’s second edition, always accompanied by COMI and the local medical staff, we returned to Ndiao Bambaly and optimized the hospital by installing three home light solutions to illuminate the rooms of the hospital even in the evening and some solar panels on the roof, essential for the permanent and independent activity of the vaccine’s refrigerator and sterilizer.