Show some Support- HIPZ

As most of you know, I work in a Doctor’s surgery in my home town. Many of the GPs there are involved in other projects as well as general practice and today I’d like to share with you the work one of our docs, Jon Rees does for the charity HIPZ
HIPZ (Health Improvements Project Zanzibar) is a UK registered charity and was established in
2006 by Dr Ru MacDonagh, a consultant surgeon based in the UK. Having worked for many years
in Zanzibar and Tanzania, Ru had developed strong links in Zanzibar with both the Health Sector
and the Government. In particular he has a longstanding professional relationship with Consultant
Surgeon, and now Principal Secretary to the Minister of Health, Dr Mohamed Jiddawi. It was
an approach from Dr Jiddawi to Ru for assistance in 2006 that lead to the creation of HIPZ. The
other trustees (eight in total) are mainly doctors who have considerable experience of working in
Africa, some qualified in tropical medicine, along with trustees with relevant financial, legal and
administrative expertise.
Dr Rees
The main point of this post is to spread the word about a bike ride that Dr Rees is doing in June to raise some much needed funds for HIPZ. I’ll leave most of the wording of this post to the man himself as he can say it far better than I can (blogger in the making?)
In June I will be part of a group representing HIPZ, cycling round the island of Zanzibar to raise money for our small charity.
I cycled around the island in 2010 and as a group we raised over £80,000 for HIPZ. This has been used over the last 3 years to continue our work in collaboration with the Zanzibar govt (public private partnership) and has been instrumental in allowing us to set up a comprehensive maternity service (including ambulance collection from the villages, and a Caesarean section service) – this has transformed maternity care in the Makunduchi region – there were no maternal deaths at Makunduchi in 2011 as a result. We have also got surgical services running, allowing simple operations such as hernia repairs, appendicectomies etc to be carried out. We have a primary health care unit running seeing over 2000 patients a month. This is all taking place in a hospital that was severely dysfunctional when HIPZ took it over.
As a result of the success at Makunduchi hospital, the Zanzibar government asked HIPZ to take over the running of Kivunge hospital in the north of Zanzibar which serves 180000 people – we now have responsibility for the health care of over 250,000 people. Kivunge has enormous problems and we again hope to develop basic maternity, paediatric, primary care and surgical services as a priority. But we need some funds to do this.
We are being joined on the bike ride by Peter Andre! Pete is now a good friend of Ru MacDonagh who founded HIPZ and Ru’s daughter Emily is Pete’s girlfriend! Pete was operated on by Ru a few years ago and has subsequently become a supporter of HIPZ, travelling out to Zanzibar last year to see our work for himself, with ITV4 film crew in tow! We will be accompanied by ITV4 film crew who will be filming for ‘Peter Andre: My Life’…
HIPZ has had huge support from local Rotary clubs – Nailsea and Backwell have been fantastic supporters and have funded the purchase of specialised anaesthetic machines for both hospitals which have been fundamental in providing maternity and surgical services. Portishead Rotary have also made a number of contributions to this project.
I am hoping to raise over £3000 for the project – I am paying all my own costs so all money raised goes direct to providing health care on Zanzibar.
 
Dr Rees with Fatawi, the nurse anaesthetist with the Glostavent anaesthetic machine bought by Nailsea / Backwell Rotary club

Decorating to make a Children’s ward a little bit brighter

Children’s ward- quite the contrast to the wards we experience here
 
If you’d like to show some support for this amazing work (and I’m kind of begging  you nicely to do so) then you can donate and sponsor Dr Rees and his bike ride by clicking on the Just Giving link
Anything you can spare would make such a difference.
For more information about HIPZ visit HIPZ website – www.hipz.org.uk or follow them on Twitter @HIPZ_UK
This isn’t the last post you see on this. It’s a cause I support fully and I have some fund raising ideas waiting to be put in to action. 
 I’ll keep you updated on the bike ride too, donate enough and I might be able to beg some Peter Andre pics! 
xxx