Your gifts of love

When COVID-19 struck, Serving In Mission set up an Immediate Response Project to help provide critically-needed personal protective equipment (PPI) along with cleaning and medical supplies to our frontline workers across the globe.

The relief fund was designed to help relieve some of the burden many of SIM’s medical ministries were facing and to support dedicated healthcare professionals, like SIM UK’s Dr Mikey Bryant, who were determined to carry on their ministries.

Thank you!

Thank you for your prayers and donations to our COVID-19 Immediate Response Project. Please continue reading to see how your response helped SIM deliver essential equipment and materials to protect patients and staff at two rural health centres in Zimbabwe…

In the mid-1900s, SIM set up the Rusitu Hospital, which is a referral hospital for six rural clinics in a valley of more than 50,000 people. The hospital is part of a mission station that has a Bible college and a high school – all owned by the United Baptist Church, which was planted by SIM and is now one of our major partners.

Rusitu Hospital, Zimbabwe, is one of the most needy medical ministries in southern Africa.

It has an outpatients department, paediatric, male and female wards, a maternity wing, a lab and a family and child health clinic. The staff is made up of 14 nurses, three lab technicians, seven general hands, three nursing auxiliaries and two cooks. However, there is only one doctor, who is paid by the government and as these are often young doctors, they do not stay long.

With the money given by its supporters, SIM was able to buy and deliver the following items that were in very limited supply:

Chikwakwa Clinic is a small rural health centre in a remote area of Zimbabwe, but serving more than 300 households (approximately 2,400 people) and a place where almost every month, babies are delivered.

It has two nurses, a nurse auxiliary and two general hands. It is run by a rural district council, which when the pandemic started, only had one thermometer and it was broken.

Rather than sanitisers, the clinic asked for liquid soap, which they put in containers for hand washing. They also desperately needed laundry soap, for washing uniforms and materials.

With the money given by its supporters, SIM was able to respond to the clinic’s urgent requests for the following:

 “Zimbabwe is a land of peace-loving people but has experienced continuous economic downfall for the past 20 years,” explains SIM Zimbabwe worker Caiphas Ngarivhume.

“As a result, its the health system is ruined and workers at major referral hospitals have gone on strike several times, demanding basic equipment to enable them to discharge their duties. Most of the time, they are forced to bring their own materials so they can work.

“This situation was made worse by COVID-19 and frontline workers were dangerously exposed. Now these supplies will go a long way to helping them serve the community with confidence and we thank the SIM supporters very much for their generous gifts.”