ICROSS PROJECTS UPDATE

ICROSS Projects 2011-2012

• 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 support communities in helping orphaned children and help them respond to poverty in the villages.
• 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 2011-2016

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.
In 2012 we are extending these programmes with the help of the Global fund and other donors. Together with a network of partners we are expanding all HIV and AIDS programmes into new districts and scaling up interventions to reach thousands more victims and patients. This year sees the opening of a new comprehensive care centre in western Kenya and new AIDS prevention projects.

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 over 26,000 people living with AIDS. This number will double within three years.
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 carers and our successes have been copied in other home care programmes. This project provides the most basic human needs, support, counselling and essentials to people who desperately need your help.

• 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.
We continue to study this problem and are part of three multi-country studies measuring the needs of these children. Our programmes are reaching 45,000 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 set ups (extended family care, foster and adaptation, village type institutions and orphanages). We are helping these children intergrading into communities and in 2006 we will scale up these programmes to meet the growing need in project areas larger than the Irish republic.
With your help we will be able to ensure the futures of thousands of these children. Not all vulnerable children are orphaned, many are severely malnourished, and many go to bed hungry every night. We need your support to change the poverty trap that drags these children into further illness and disease.

• 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 build 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

• 3,000 people die from malaria a day. They die because they lack access to health care, life saving drugs and bed-nets
• Every year there are over 300,000,000 cases of malaria (10 new cases every second).
• Malaria is on the rise. Malaria is responsible for one out of four childhood deaths.
• We have implemented a comprehensive malaria prevention and control programme in five districts. In 2005-2009 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.


2. Community Health 2011-2016

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.
Our new programmes over the next 5 years are outlined in detail in the downloadable strategic plan 2011-2016 and in the annual report 2011

• 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 cover 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.
In 2004 ICROSS trained 180 midwives. In 2005 we are training a further 340.

• 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 Worker Training

In 2005 ICROSS will train 900 health workers with the assistance of the Irish people. We will also train over 600 carers of AIDS patients and hundreds of other health workers. This is part of a holistic and comprehensive strategy to transfer medical knowledge into the tribal belief systems in Africa.
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, diarrhoeal diseases cause some 6,000 deaths, mostly among children under five
• Diarrhoeal diseases have killed more children in the past ten years than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II.

3. 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 (see research section)

• 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.

• Health
30 year of providing primary health care, emergency services, long term clinical support and long range community health.

• Nutrition
Mother and child nutrition, improving food for school aged children, comprehensive training and nutritional awareness.

• HIV
Our HIV activities include homecare for terminally ill, AIDS orphans and vulnerable children, TB awareness, detection and control, maternal transmission education, voluntary counseling and testing, behavior change communication.

• Campaign and awareness
Since 2005 we have had international exhibitions around the world to create a better understanding of poverty and injustice. Our awareness campaign range from female circumcision to malnutrition and starvation.

• 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.

• Emergency
Since the east Africa drought of 1983-84, to the most troubled conflict of 2007-08, ICROSS has been working with friends and communities playing a critical role in fighting poverty.