23 new clinics bring healthcare within reach

Sponsored children need to be within walking distance of a clinic, sponsored children can get care and treatment when they need it, and babies can be immunized against preventable disease and weighed regularly. Plan works with sponsored children’s communities and Niger's Ministry of Health to build health centers, staffed by nurses or villagers trained as community health agents and managed by the community. 

Since 2002, Plan Niger has built 23 health clinics in Dosso. Three of them are large scale medical facilities with nurses, a pharmacist, and a manager, while the smaller clinics are staffed by a nurse who handles preventative care and healing treatments for basic illnesses. As important, Plan helps the community to maintain all the facilities. In Tillabery, Plan now supports a further seven health centers.

These health facilities are stocked with drugs, vaccinations, syringes, scales to weigh babies and pregnant women. Finishing touches include ensuring each clinic's roof is sturdy enough to hold up in Niger’s violent rainstorms that fall in three months of the year.