Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Trip to Kenya, post 2


Today, in our weekly Bible study at work, we never quite got around to studying the Bible. Instead, I was asked to tell more what motivated the trip to Kenya and what was accomplished. It isn't possible to explain it all in one post, but I'll make a start.

Kijabe hospital is a mission hospital sponsored by Africa Inland Church. It is one of the larger hospitals in Kenya (over 200 beds) and, together with the associated Bethany Crippled Childrens hospital does world class orthopedics while providing general medical care for people throughout East Africa. One of the major concerns of the hospital is care for HIV positive patients, for which it receives funding from the U. S. government. One of the requirements for this funding is to supply reports documenting the use and effectiveness of the care provided.

The hospital also has been reaching the limits of a small Access database that stores patient data for reporting. So the need is to replace the Access database with something that meets the hospital reporting requirements while meeting the U. S. government requirements as well, all with very limited resources (the picture with this post is a picture of the data center - after we've installed the two identical PC boxes in the center of the picture to host the new database). This need was presented to Grace EV Free Church in La Mirada, CA by Ted Witmer, the missionary who heads up computer support at the hospital. Four of us who heard the presentation (myself, my oldest son Peter, Tim and Alison) also heard God calling us to meet this need, so we formed a team and made the trip.

For more on the impact of AIDS in Africa, go here

to continue the story...


(updated to add AIDS link)

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