Healtcare program in The Regency of Ketapang

The specific objective of the project is to “Sustain the development of the Radiology department program Maternity Fatima Hospital in Ketapang with the replacement of the equipment and the training of the staff”.

The project will be developed in Ketapang, an important center of the homonymous Regency, inhabited by 464.227 persons.

In many low-income countries, the maternal mortality rate (defined as the death of the mother during pregnancy or within 42 days of the birth) is 100 times greater than in high-income countries. Rates of stillbirth (defined as death in utero after 28 weeks of pregnancy) and neonatal mortality (defined as the death of a live-born baby within 28 days of life) are often 10 times greater or more than in high-income countries.

In Kelantan area and in particularly in Ketapang area, the situation is very worrying.

Since the benefits of private expenditure tend to be weighted towards the rich, this has contributed to significant disparities with basic health interventions not reaching the poor. For example, infant mortality rates for the poor are three times higher than for the rich (Country Strategy Paper UE, 2013).

For this reason, the Augustinian sisters have decided to provide to the poorest a high-quality healthcare program in the Fatima Hospital of Ketapang, together with other six rural clinics around the area. The Augustinians Across the World Foundation, in 2017, has decided to support the Radiology clinic and to replace the old Stationary X-Ray System, often broken.

By the new Stationary X-Ray System, bought in January 2018, we will increase the number of patients up to 20.000/year (now 12.000). Moreover, we can improve the skill of the doctors and reduce the morbidity, complication rates, and mortality due to diagnostic tools that are not functioning properly.