Mission in Madagascar: From Three Clinics to a Lasting Healthcare Network

We returned from Madagascar having achieved results that exceeded the mission’s initial goals.

We had set out to complete three clinics in remote villages in the Deep South, built thanks to a crowdfunding campaign on Ginger. As the project developed, a private donor decided to fund two additional facilities: a fourth clinic in the last of the four villages we support and a fifth within the special school in Toliara, attended by blind children and children with disabilities.

And so, three clinics became five.

The facilities were built by men from the villages, who were fairly paid for their work. Afterwards, the walls and furniture were painted and decorated together with the children. This was a way of making each clinic part of the community from the very beginning: not buildings simply delivered from outside, but places built and brought to life by the people who will use them.

However, the most important result is not the buildings themselves, but what will now be able to happen inside them.

Until this mission, healthcare in the villages was mainly available during our visits: a few days of medical consultations, followed by long months without regular medical care. Now, Dr Jerrick, the Malagasy doctor who works with SSCh, will visit the local population on a regular basis, following a set schedule for each clinic. He will also be present at the special school at least once a week.

Until yesterday, we brought healthcare with us. From today, healthcare is here to stay.

Medical Consultations, Medicines and Malnutrition Prevention

Throughout the mission, Dr Jerrick examined adults and children from morning until evening, often working with only the most basic resources: a chair, a mat or simply the shade of a tree.

All medical consultations were provided free of charge, and medicines were distributed to those who needed them. Malnutrition screening for children aged zero to three also continued, together with the distribution of milk and fortified nutritional foods.

Rice was distributed to families in all four villages, while the weekly water-tanker deliveries continued—an essential service that does not stop when the mission ends, but carries on throughout the year.

An Intervention That Saved a Life

During the mission, a woman suffering from a severe build-up of fluid in her lungs was urgently transferred to hospital. The doctors told us that even the slightest further delay could have been fatal.

She survived and has now returned home.

This episode captures the deeper purpose of building clinics in the villages: bringing healthcare closer to people and making it possible to identify a serious condition before it is too late.

Supporting the Special School

At the special school in Toliara, we also delivered 26 new mattresses to replace those that had become worn out. The situation remains challenging, and some of the youngest children still have to share a bed, but this intervention has brought a tangible improvement to their everyday living conditions.

We spent a great deal of time with the children and met Tuvnai again, the blind child whom SSCh has been supporting for some time. Today, Tuvnai has a home, attends a school suited to his needs and, thanks to the new clinic, will be able to receive a weekly visit from a doctor.

Letters Between Two Distant Worlds

At one of the schools we renovated during a previous mission, the children gathered to read letters sent by pupils from a school in Roncola, in the province of Bergamo, and to write their replies.

It was an encounter made possible through words and drawings: thousands of kilometres apart, two groups of children found a way to get to know one another and communicate.

The Mission Continues

The construction of the five clinics is an important achievement, but it also marks the beginning of a greater commitment. Each facility will need to continue providing medical consultations and medicines, as well as arranging patient transfers and hospital admissions whenever necessary.

A clinic is not simply a building. It is a promise that must be kept every day: ensuring that healthcare can reach people before an illness becomes an emergency.