Bread and Water for Africa® partner Rural Youth Development Organization – Sierra Leone (RYDO-SL) has the primary goal “to provide free and affordable health services for rural people, including community-based health education, and services to families and disadvantaged individuals.”

And, thanks to our supporters, we are proud to be able to assist them in their mission of preventing and treating illnesses and injuries and literally saving lives.

RYDO-SL partners and collaborates its work with two hospitals and nine health centers and clinics, including a COVID-19 health center in the Bo District, and in the past year, RYDO-SL reported that these hospitals and health centers have served more than 25,000 Sierra Leonean children, mothers, parents, and elders.

Among them is Nyanwo Luseni, a 40-year-old single mother living in the small village of Kortumahun, four miles from the Bumpe Health Center, who had been suffering for years from severe high blood pressure which required medical treatment.

After being diagnosed at a government hospital in 2017, she was prescribed medication which she desperately needed; however, “there was no pharmacy, and no medication available for her sickness,” RYDO – SL program manager Joseph Kobba told us.

Joseph told us the nearest pharmacy to her was in the city of Bo, and the cost of her medicine — $10 — which was more than she could ever possibly raise from the meager revenue she earns selling the produce she grows in her small vegetable garden and sells at the village market.

But, again, thanks to the supporters we were able to ship a 40-foot container filled with medical supplies and medicines — including the medicine Nyanwo needed to save her life — which was provided to her, free of charge.

“That was three months ago,” Joseph told us earlier this year,” and today her blood pressure, which is being monitored at the Bumpe Health Center, her blood pressure is normal and she is now able to again work in her garden.”

Joseph told us that the equipment necessary to monitor blood pressure is not available at most of the small village health centers in the Bo District, and that, sadly, high blood pressure, easily treatable with prescribed medication, is “reported as one of the sicknesses that show the highest death rate in the country.”

And to our supporters who made it possible to ship the life-saving medicine to RYDO-SL, Nyanwo says:

“Thanks to Bread and Water for Africa® for your timely support for helping to save my life.”