Each year on Christmas Eve, we take a special offering to support the work of The Plaster House in Tanzania. Here’s the year-end update from Sarah Rejman (thank you Pat Dunlop for sharing this with us!)
The Road to 1000 – The Destination
The Plaster House team set a goal of treating 1000 children in the 12 months of 2021 – something that we had never done before, we had never treated more than 700 children with disabilities in a calendar year.
A month ago, I had a freak accident falling from a stand at my girls’ soccer game on a Saturday morning. I found myself having emergency surgery at the same hospital where we treat all our children from The Plaster House. Stepping through the process of being prepped for surgery, going through the operating room, recovering, and now rehabilitating well at home, gave me pause for thought. All the moving parts; all the hospital staff, family and friends – that needed to come together to treat one person – and at The Plaster House we have done this 1000 times over in 45 weeks so far this year.
To achieve this, we needed to maximize our impact in every department of the Rehabilitative Program:
- Our Outreach team has been creative in the ways they reach more children and families who could benefit from our service;
- Our Plaster House Operations team kept our home open, filled with love, food, and clean laundry for up to 190 children at a time;
- Our Medical and Expansion team stepped up to the challenge of assessing, treating and coordinating the hospital care for every child through our gates, while working new opportunities and relationships to meet our increased throughput of patients;
- Our Finance and Administrative team stretched to maintain donor relationships, manage the storerooms to keep The Plaster House ticking, working to the mantra, ‘High love, Low cost’ rehabilitative surgery for children with disabilities.
Jackson, 4 years old, our 1000th patient to come into The Plaster House this year. He was brought by his parents from Loliondo, north of the Serengeti, for treatment for a burn scar contracture on his arm. His treatment includes the therapeutic feeding program, being assessed by the pediatric medical team and the surgical team, a planned surgery and recovery at ALMC, and rehabilitation under the care of our nursing team who will look after his dressings, and the therapy team who will prescribe exercises and provide a specially made splint.
All this care is pulled together and underpinned by the love and care of our whole team at The Plaster House.
We dared to dream big for 2021, our dreams and more have come true! This success is not possible without your support. We still have children arriving at our gates with their parents or caregivers, in fact 50 new patients were assessed last week. They are full of hope The Plaster House will be their chance for a future without a disability.
We would love it if you could support more patients through to the end of the year – we expect another 150 patients.
With love,
Sarah
