The fifth mission of the Ka Dounia Dia team to Ouagadougou was long waited for, quite a few humanitarian actions are cancelled due to security concerns and with good reason as travelling outside the capital is out of question and even within the capital public places should be avoided.

The 6 of October about 100 families presented themselves for the consultation which only ended late in the evening , around 35 kids were scheduled for operation during our 2 week stay and the medical team orthopedic chirurgiens Harjanneke van Gelder, Koen Defoort, Dick van der Schaaf instrumentalist Chantal Jansen and anesthesiologist Rob Steur only finished the program a few hours before taking the plane home on Friday October 18 Dr Almamy Kire from Mali joined us for the last week and performed several interventions with the team.

The construction of the operation unit with 16 beds in the Don Orione medical centre is well on it s way, rough building should be finished by the end of this year, interior by March /April 2020 and full equipment ready by July/August 2020. For the equipment of the theatre KDD got a generous gift of € 25.000 enabling us to finance sterilization and anestesie units and we are still searching for a donor to finance the absolutely needed radiography.

For 2020 three missions are programmed, two regular ones to Burkina Faso
( end February and early October ) and a special short mission to Bamako Mali first week of February to assist dr. Kire of the Centre National des Handicapés on a number of complicated cases ( 15 to 20 children already consulted during our last visit last year ).
Probably KDD will have to rent a operation unit in a private local hospital as the Centre National is not properly equipped.
If the security situation in the country deteriorates further we might be forced to cancel future missions to protect our volunteers which would be catastrophic for the kids and families concerned, it’s hard to decide how far one can take the risk. Of course KDD owes a word of gratefulness to the team which acquitted their job with so much devotion, the local Burkina Be team which worked almost around the clock and our hosts at Don Orione: thank you thank you thank you!