by Danielle Shapiro
Amy Lehman is working furiously to build a floating hospital that will bring medical care to millions of hard-to-reach people in Congo. Danielle Shapiro reports from the water.
On a baking hot day this past October when Amy Lehman set out on eastern Africa’s Lake Tanganyika, the frustrations started early. She was in the region to deliver 15,000 mosquito bed nets to several Congolese villages along the lake’s mountainous shores. Here malaria is rampant and the population’s isolation and poverty is nearly complete.
Amy Lehman, founder of the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic.
But she remained unfazed because as she put it, she “loves going and doing the hardest thing.” And in starting her nonprofit, the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, three years ago, Lehman, 37, may have found just that.
Her outreach was one of several she’s been conducting with the LTFHC as she raises money to build a hospital boat—complete with operating rooms, an intensive-care unit, a green roof, and telecommunications—that will traverse the lake. The vessel will bring much-needed medical care to the 3 million people living along its shores in Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, and Zambia.
Lehman’s goal is to use the region’s lifeline, the lake, to bring a high-level hospital to villagers rather than those villagers having to get there themselves. Such a journey is nearly impossible for many in an area where roads, electricity, running water, and even access to municipal services are scarce. Once built, the boat’s staff will also provide training for local health-care workers. Continue reading →
ntinence. Not only do these women and girls often lose their infants during obstructed labors, they are shunned by their communities and families for the rest of their lives.
