A few people have asked me recently about staffing the hospital, so I want to respond here. Dagnigan and the other villages have committed to hiring two full-time employees, a nurse and a midwife. This is standard: in Togo, doctors generally stay in urban hospitals. Frankly, finding personnel is not difficult; the Togolese unemployment rate is staggering, and many qualified and well-trained professionals are looking for work. It would be premature to hire anyone before we finish fundraising, but several impressive candidates have already applied (even though the positions have not been advertized). The village chiefs and hospital’s organizing committee are consulting with the government’s prefectural director of health on the choice of personnel. Dagnigan and the other villages are financially prepared to pay their employees’ salaries. The Association of Cocoa Growers in Dagnigan—(the plateau region of Togo exports cocoa as a cash crop)—has pledged enough money for two months’ salaries and the initial purchase of medicines to stock the pharmacy. After that, the hospital will build a modest fee into the price of medication in order to pay salaries. The hospital’s organizing committee will also supplement the salaries with monthly in-kind payment of yams, cassava, and other staples. Not every village has the organization and solidarity to pay monthly salaries, but Dagnigan certainly does. Illustratively, Dagnigan has maintained a community-run secondary school (collège d’enseignement général or CEG communautaire, which corresponds to grades 7-10 in the American system) for the last ten years. A community school is one in which the village, rather than the government, hires and pays teachers. Moreover, Dagnigan is quite rural, so property value and cost of living are extremely low. In the long-term, our hope is that the government will “sponsor” the hospital. This means that the government will send salaried employees to work there, although our organizing committee will retain management prerogatives. State sponsorship will benefit the villages in three ways. It will add diversity to a very homogenous population. Because of the lack of paved roads and means of transportation, the Akebou region, including Dagnigan, is culturally and commercially isolated. Second, it will send educated men and women with relatively large government salaries to Dagnigan. This generally promotes innovation and sparks the local economy. Lastly, it will relieve Dagnigan from paying salaries, which will slightly reduce the cost of medication. In an ironic way, our chances of state sponsorship, even within the first year, are good. The Togolese government no longer has the resources to build hospitals (or schools, for that matter) in rural areas. If a village somehow manages to build its own hospital, however, the state will staff it. The state has more consistently staffed rural, community hospitals in recent years as its commitment to building them has all but vanished. In fact, the prefectural director of health strongly intimated, but could not quite guarantee, government sponsorship if Dagnigan builds the hospital. In the event the state does not sponsor the hospital, however, Dagnigan and the other villages will retain the plan I discussed to pay salaries indefinitely. Thank you for your interest in our project. Please visit our webpage for more information and to make a donation: igg.me/at/villagehealthcenter/x/3596080.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 01:12:46 +0000
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