Senitizo's Summer Newsletter Reaching More Communities and Building Lasting Care for More Families

As we enter this last part of summer (or rainy season here in CAR), it has already been an incredibly busy year for Senitizo. Across our programs, we are expanding the work we have built up over the past seven years while also preparing to bring quality healthcare to new communities. It is an exciting period of growth for our organization - but, more importantly, it means that more families will have access to healthcare in places where before it didn't exist.

One area where growth is already visible is in our vaccination work. This year, we have significantly expanded our support to the Ministry of Health’s vaccination campaigns, helping bring vaccines for measles, polio, Mpox, and Ebola directly into underserved and marginalized communities, while still continuing routine childhood vaccination services at our health facilities. The photos you see above come from a recent Ebola vaccination campaign among indigenous Aka communities living in the forested areas surrounding our rural programs. Reaching these communities requires traveling far beyond the walls of our clinics, but it is an important part of our commitment to ensure that geography, poverty, or social status does not determine who has access to lifesaving healthcare.

At the same time, we are preparing for the largest expansion of our rural health programs since Senitizo began. In the coming months, we will add six additional rural health facilities to the clinics we support, with a particular focus on maternal and child health. Already this year, our teams have helped more than 300 mothers safely deliver their babies. As we expand to these new facilities, this number will grow significantly.

Behind those numbers is a simple goal that guides our work: every woman should have access to quality prenatal care, a safe place to give birth, and continued care for herself and her baby after delivery. In a country where pregnancy and childbirth remain far too dangerous for women, expanding access to these basic services is no less than lifesaving. As Senitizo grows, we want to make sure that growth remains rooted in what has always been at the heart of our work - being present in underserved communities, strengthening the health system that already exists, and making quality healthcare something families can depend on.

One element of Senitizo's foundation is that our work is not simply about providing healthcare at a single moment in someone’s life. We want to build a health system that people can depend on over time - a steady presence of quality care for individuals and families as their needs change from year to year. For us, success is not only measured by the number of consultations we provide, but by the trust that is built when a patient knows that good care will be there the next time she needs it.

Prisca’s (above) story is a wonderful example of what that looks like in practice. When she was pregnant with her first child, Prisca came to our clinic for all four of her recommended prenatal consultations before safely delivering her baby boy, Jospin, with our maternity team. In the months that followed, she returned with him for his routine childhood vaccinations and again when he became sick and needed treatment. Most recently, Prisca herself was among the community members who benefitted from our Ebola vaccination campaign.

Over time, these individual moments of care become something much bigger. Pregnancy, childbirth, childhood illness, vaccination and disease prevention are often treated as separate health interventions. But for Prisca and her family, they are simply different moments in their lives when they needed a health system they could trust. That is the kind of relationship Senitizo is working to build with the communities we serve: not a one-time intervention, but a lasting presence - providing quality care today, and still being there when our patients need us tomorrow.

Save the Date! Fall Events

Please save the date for events planned when Ted Hooley, President and CEO, will be back in the U.S. to talk about the organization's accomplishments over the past year and the new exciting plans coming up. The events will be:

In Stillwater, MN: Tuesday, September 15th - 6pm - 8:30pm (early or late arrivals are fine! No RSVP needed) at the Loft (214 S Main St.).

In Genessee, CO: Thursday, September 24th - 5pm - 7pm at 2344 Foothills Dr. S., Golden, CO (please RSVP to ted@senitizo.org if planning to attend this event).

Online event accessible anywhere in the world on Zoom: Wednesday, September 23rd - 7pm Mountain Time (MDT) - register via link below for access to the event:

If you can't make these events and now is a good time of year for you to donate in support of our work, there are many ways to contribute, and all donations to Senitizo are tax-deductible which is a 501c3 nonprofit organization (FEIN: 82-1555063).

You can donate via our website by clicking the donate button below:

Make a check out to Senitizo and send to:

Senitizo

2344 Foothills Dr. S.

Golden CO

Or use your donor advised fund or make a qualified charitable distribution from your IRA account!

For those of you that have already donated in the past couple of months, thank you for your continued and generous support! If you haven't yet received a note of thanks and donation receipt, you can expect to receive it in the coming weeks. Thank you!