Donate to PATH : Rehydration corners

Kids need a place to get well

You can help make room for children in Kenya’s clinics

It used to be a common sight in Kenya: a cluster of wooden chairs tucked into the corner of a health clinic waiting room; a mother sitting with her sick child. The child sips water mixed with vital salts and minerals and slowly recovers from life-threatening diarrhea.

In places like this, mothers learned how to nurse their children through the illness. Children got the care they needed when they were at their sickest—even if doctors were too overwhelmed to help.

Today, these corners are almost gone. But together we can bring them back. You can help Kenya’s clinics make room for children.

No space for sick kids?

These rehydration corners are a lifesaving respite. Once widespread even in rural clinics, they were a turning point for countries where diarrheal disease was the primary killer of children.

But the corners have disappeared from Kenya’s health centers. Health priorities have shifted, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV/AIDS is an epidemic crisis. The furniture has been moved to other wards, the seating areas replaced with equipment or storage.

Some doctors believe so strongly in rehydration corners that they build the furniture with their own hands. But it’s not enough: in countries that can least afford to lose ground on this disease, the use of oral rehydration is falling.

You can help bring back rehydration corners

By the end of this year, we need your help to fund 55 rehydration corners in Kenya. That’s enough to put basic equipment in almost every major clinic in Western Province, which has the second-highest rate of child death from diarrheal disease.

It takes just US$300 to furnish a clinic with a table, chairs, water jugs with lids, cups, measuring spoons, and a timer that helps moms know when to give their children more to drink.

Here’s what you can do:

• Make a gift. Even $10 gets us closer to equipment for one more clinic.
• Spread the word. Claim a clinic—make a gift of $30 and ask nine people you know to do the same to reach $300. Or give $50 and ask five others to join you.

Kids who need rehydration corners can’t speak for themselves—but you have a voice. Speak out on Facebook, send an email, talk to a friend. We can do this, with your help!

Your gift can protect young lives

Why do we want to bring back rehydration corners? Because they work. Health workers, research, and mothers attest to the simple power of having a place in clinics to triage children who arrive with diarrhea. When given correctly, oral rehydration is more than 90 percent effective in rehydrating a child sick from diarrhea. And that means saving lives.

Why do we need you? Because this project is a grassroots effort, driven by a small, passionate team of PATH staff. Add your voices to theirs. Together we can rebuild the rehydration corners—and a hopeful future for families across Kenya.

Photos, from top: Richard Lord, PATH/Hope Randall.