When the cholera outbreak hit Limbe last November, Ebenezer Clinic went from being a Monday to Friday day clinic to a 24 hour, 7 days a week treatment center overnight. Thankfully, the in-patient hospital had just been finished 2 days before, but we had not yet gotten to the point of purchasing and installing an inverter system to provide 24 hour electricity. So, for the last few months, the clinic's generator has been running pretty much 24/7 - which uses a lot of diesel and costs a lot of money. Sometimes as much as $400 to $500 US a week depending on how much EDH we receive. We don't really have the budget to sustain that at all, so the ECCC has been working on fundraising for an inverter system for us. This has all come together in the past few weeks and last Friday, Josh from Strathmore arrived in Cap with 6 solar panels (still intact!) and the inverter system for the clinic. After a bit of negotiation at customs, we were able to get everything released for a "fair" price and made the journey on the bumpy roads home without breaking anything!
Josh has been working hard to install everything and last night, the hospital was able to run on the batteries for a good portion of the night. He'll be doing more testing in the next couple of days to see how much energy the panels can produce and how much we will have to run the diesel generator.
This is such a great gift for the clinic - everyone is so excited! Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen!
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