ICROSS overview 2011

Overview: Danny Ngwiri Country Director

ICROSS in a nutshell 2011

For those not familiar with ICROSS here is an overview of who we are and what we do, where we do it and how we work.

Background: ICROSS was created by Dr. Joe Barnes and Dr. Michael Meegan in 1979. It established a new approach towards long term health care (this is explained in details in our downloadable strategic plan) For decades ICROSS has developed public health research that has pioneered low cost innovations (please see research section)

Philosophy: We believe in evidence driven, results based long term solutions that can be shared. We do not believe that projects should be donor agendas, they must be community decided and locally planned.
We succeed because all we do is long term over decades, in local language and through local culture. Our work is built through continuities.

Passion: None should ever sleep and be hungry; no child needs to be sick and untreated or thirsty. Everything we do will change the poverty trap and the short term idea of poverty. Our humanity is how we care for each other and embrace those who are vulnerable and hurt.

We are going to end starvation and suffering, but we can only do this together.

Vision: A World free of needless suffering and infant death where people can be cared for and respected as they are within their own language , culture, traditions and beliefs. Where there is no hunger and starvation in a World of such vast wealth. Where there is compassion and kindness based on equality and shared empathy and understanding.

What we do: We fight poverty by identifying a root cause of suffering and designing long term ways to create change. Famine relief, short term projects and quick solutions do not work. For 30 years, we have been developing alternative innovations and low tech solutions to big problems.

Who we are: ICROSS is an international Non-governmental organisation working in partnership with civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, governments and bilateral agencies including the Global Fund, the European Union, the World Health Organisation UNICEF other Organizations and local communities.

We are a group of trained professional s in global health and development ranging from clinical services and gynecological to water and sanitation. Most of our teams and all our managers are from local communities.






What do we do?

We prevent diseases and control epidemics.
We create long term changes in infant mortality.
We are creating low cost-effective solutions to break the cycle of poverty.
We train, educate and support thousands of local people to be self sufficient.
We see what is working and find out what is effective through scientific study and research. Working with international institutions we have published widely on new innovative responses to disease and poverty.

We identify the most vulnerable children and communities in need and provide practical immediate help and long term solutions so they will be independent.

We believe in evidence led public health programmes responding to the realities on the ground.

HIV, AIDS, TB & Malaria 2011

For over 20 years ICROSS has been fighting HIV AIDS in Kenya. ICROSS is responding to one of the worst tragedies to strike Africa; AIDS.
Africa has over 70% of the world's HIV cases and Kenya has over 1.4 million of the world's 34 million people living with the virus. Every day more than 6,000 people die of AIDS most in Sub Saharan Africa. TB is rising dramatically and more people died last year of malaria in Africa than HIV/AIDS. These three killer diseases are central to our public health prevention programmes.

Home Based Care
We are preventing new infections through education, training and safe management of AIDS infected. We are protecting their families from infection and are reaching out to people living with AIDS.

Our home care programmes provide nutritional and medical support to the poorest of the poor. They allow people to die with dignity in their own homes instead of in hospitals where there are often three patients to one bed. Home care reduces the risk of secondary infections to vulnerable children and careers and our successes have been copied in other home care programmes.

Orphans & Vulnerable Children
There are over 900,000 AIDS orphans in Kenya and many more children orphaned from other diseases. Every day, 700 adults of reproductive age die in Kenya, leaving behind an increasing number of children.
The crisis is rapidly worsening across all of Africa.Our programmes are reaching AIDS orphans and vulnerable children providing care, support, education, nutrition and medical care. Many of these children are sick themselves and require a lot of love and support.

We are working with children in many different environments and situations (extended family care, foster and adaptation, village type institutions and orphanages). We are helping these children to stay in there communities

Voluntary Counseling: The most important thing in fighting AIDS is prevention, education, empowering people and encouraging safe sex. At the centre of our AIDS prevention is a peer based awareness programme backed up by voluntary counseling and testing.

Together with our partners we have built a comprehensive care center with voluntary counseling and testing facility to create an infrastructure and support system that greatly reduce new infections and protect the younger generation. It also provides effective counseling, support and helps those infected by HIV and share knowledge and awareness.

Malaria Control
We have implemented a comprehensive malaria prevention and control
programme in two districts. Next year we want to cut malaria cases with 50% among the people we work with.

We are using rapid response, multiple prevention and careful research. With your help we can cut malaria deaths in half. Ways of preventing malaria include insecticide treated bed-nets and simply by reducing the number of mosquitoes by spraying breeding grounds and cutting grass around huts and homesteads. Moreover, safe pregnancy is ensured by providing anti malaria tablets to pregnant women.

Community Health 2011
In most of Africa people are so poor they have no health services, since 1979 we have provided essential health services to tribal communities across Kenya and Tanzania. These programmes include disease control, nutrition, family planning, women’s health, infant and children’s health, immunization and vaccination, clinical services, long term prevention and child survival.

ICROSS provides essential medical and health programmes in many remote areas. Some of these areas are as big as Belgium and Denmark. We make sure that vital medical care is accessible by people living absolute poverty, by setting up dispensaries and training community health workers.

Building on 30 years of success in community health we are planning exciting new programmes with communities throughout the Rift Valley.
These will provide essential health care, primary and preventive medicine and water, sanitation and reproductive health care.

Infectious Disease Control
For 25 years we have worked to reduce some of the worst killers in Africa. Diarrheal illness and waterborne disease remains our top priority. Our success in diarrhoea control has been replicated around the world and ICROSS with College of Surgeons in Dublin have produced the only three clinical control trials of solar disinfection to reduce diarrhoea.

Our infectious disease programme covers a wide range of diseases like cholera typhoid and diarrhoea as well as trachoma infections and sexually transmitted infections. ICROSS works with many pastoral and nomadic tribes preventing disease through culture and local language.

Safe Motherhood
Thousands of women die unnecessarily through pregnancy and childbirth. Many more suffer from malnutrition and serious illness. ICROSS implements women's health and safe motherhood programmes in hundreds of villages in Kenya. Safe motherhood advances and lessons have been shared with other programmes in 12 African countries and the Philippines over the past 18 months.

With your help hundreds of mothers could have the right to choose through appropriate reproductive health care have safe pregnancies with proper nutrition and have qualified home delivery through trained birth attendants.

Child Health
The most vulnerable population in Africa is children. The vast majority dying needlessly are children who are often too weak from hunger to fight disease. With over 140 million hungry children in sub Saharan Africa, more children live in absolute poverty than ever before. The average child in Africa has 30 times more illness and disease each year than an European child.

The average child in Africa has less than US$ 10 a year expenditure on health and less than US$ 50 a year to food. ICROSS works in 42 small projects educating and training mothers and elder children to protect the health of small children.

Our child health programmes have existed over 25 years and have been visited by over 2000 colleagues and health professionals from around the world. Our child health initiative include child to child health promotion, immunization and follow up, child nutrition, educational support for non-school going children and working through women’s groups, targeting other vulnerable children.

Child development and assessment of nutritional progress is the cornerstone of our child health programmes in desert areas.

We have three ongoing research programmes looking at the nutritional status of children in desert, rural and urban areas. We are following the nutritional growth of over 40,000 children among the Maasai. 30% of ICROSS programmes are child focused given the mean average age in Africa is 17 and falling and child hood diseases are rising rapidly. Child health care remains a vital part of our work.

Health Education
All our training is through the local culture and language. These health workers are supported by local communities 80% of our 560 volunteers are mothers and grandmothers. It costs 6 pounds to train one health worker in disease control and prevention, hygiene and sanitation.

Hygiene & Sanitation
Water-related diseases are a growing human tragedy, killing more than 5 million people each year About 2.3 billion people suffer from diseases linked to dirty water. Some 60% of all infant mortality worldwide is linked to infectious and parasitic diseases, most of them water-related.

Water-borne diseases include cholera, typhoid, bacillary dysentery, polio, meningitis, hepatitis A and E and diarrhoea, among others. These are diseases caused by dirty water, and most can be prevented by treating water before use

Every day, diarrheal diseases cause some 6,000 deaths, mostly among children under five. diarrheal diseases have killed more children in the past ten years than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II.

Fighting Poverty in Africa

ICROSS fights poverty in Africa through series of campaigns and long term commitment. For over three decades we at ICROSS have been at the core phase making a difference where it counts. ICROSS is growing dynamically building on its experience with young skilled African managers. It does not copy other organizations’ but explore creative new ways and alternatives. It embraces new ideas constantly challenging assumptions. ICROSS learning and research have been published internationally


Water
Since 1994 we have been fighting diarrhea by providing clean water, providing water sources, protecting water holes and refining use of SODIS and pioneering water disinfection

Innovations
Among our innovation have been improvement to reduce neo natal tetanus, development of fly traps to reduce trachoma blindness and the first clinical control trials of solar disinfection.

Local cultures
ICROSS has built all its programmes through the local cultures, traditions, believes and language.

Community ownership
Poverty can only be defeated through programmes that are owned by the people, we do not believe in donor driven agendas but by plans owned by local communities.