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The Mali Health Organizing Project

Region/Community: Peri-urban slums in Bamako, Mali.

Description: Mali Health Organizing Project (MHOP) acts as a catalyst to bring slum residents and their governments together to create health change. Our goals are to 1) enable slum residents to create their own healthcare systems and 2) to get slums and their governments into a working relationship.

In The Press: Articles in Boston Globe, Brown Daily Herald, Glimpse Magazine, Have Fun Do Good, and more...

From Caitlin: In Mali one in fourchildren dies before their fifth birthday, and 93% of urban residents live in slums. I was working the night shift in a clinicin an urban slum in 2005, and I helped deliver a baby. It was born dead. In a hot, unventilated room, lying on a dirty piece of fabric, the baby’s mother, Sitan, had labored for hours, crying silently.The baby had died from placental malaria, and Sitan was transported to the hospital hemorrhaging, her lifeless child wrapped in the same piece of fabric she had given birth on. I was completely unpreparedfor what "child mortality" means, physically and emotionally. But Ilearned that people care very strongly about their health and healthcan be used to mobilize slum communities to fight an injustice thatis not due solely to microbes, but also to social exclusion.