The objective of this programme is to treat patients who would not otherwise have access to the care they need and to train local health teams in extremely rural areas to carry out this work themselves in the future.
AMREF’s planes take specialist surgeons to areas where there are no communications, limited medical services and little or no surgical services. We travel to inaccessible areas that can only be reached by plane, where health clinics and hospitals try to support hundreds of people staying in outlaying villages where the only health facility may be a man selling paracetamol in a roadside kiosk.
The emergency airborne evacuation service generates income for these activities by contracting out to international medical insurance providers, whose fee-paying customers require evacuation by a top quality airborne medical team. They also collect local emergency patients free of charge.
The AMREF laboratory network provides clinical and public health support to several countries in the region. Its services are particularly important where there is no government public health service, where it monitors disease outbreaks such as cholera, kala-azar and meningitis. AMREF is the lead partner in a WHO-supported programme to establish a quality control model for rural laboratories which also builds local expertise throughout East Africa. This will be replicated in South African states.
All of these services can be mobilised for rapid humanitarian response to disaster situations, with an emphasis on the needs of health services. In emergencies, AMREF concentrates on the health aspects and works closely with ministries of health, health facilities operated by other non-governmental organisations and specialised relief agencies. We respond quickly to a broad range of problems such as epidemic disease outbreaks, famine, civil strife with injury and disease, major accidents, flooding and other environmental emergencies. Staff supplies, transport and laboratory support can be provided with short notice in consultation with governments, international organisations and other NGO's. Recent interventions have focused on famine, flooding, cholera, Rift Valley Fever, refugees from Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, and bomb-blasts in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.
