Provide Emergency Power and Improve Night Time Access for the Dareda Kati Health Center

Dareda Kati Health Center is a beautiful facility now serving ~50,000 residents in Ayalagaya and neighboring wards. In 2024 alone they attended almost 9,000 outpatient visits, conducted over 7,000 pregnancy checkups, birthed over 1,400 babies, conducted almost 6,000 well-baby checkups, consulted with 5,800 women on family planning, and performed almost 16,000 vaccinations.

The following projects have been completed already

• Maternity Ward in Oct 2021.

• Outpatient Services in Jan 2022.

• Overnight Ward in May 2022.

• Security building and covered walkways in April 2022.

• Expansion of the IT system in April 2022.

• Reproductive and Children’s Health Building in Sep 2022.

• Laboratory in Sep 2022.

• Mortuary in Dec 2022.

• Medical equipment donations to enhance healthcare are ongoing.

However, one area that is challenging is supporting night time operations, facilitating emergency access, and maintaining operations during power outages. The town’s electricity is very unstable. When the power is down the clinic cannot refrigerate medicines, register patients in the computer, provide surgical lighting, operate laboratory and sterilization  equipment, do laundry, nor support night time operations. In fact, doctors have had to deliver babies with only the lights from their cell phones! At night some areas, e.g. walkways and parking areas have no lighting making transit difficult. And there are insufficient walkways to the essential laundry and incinerator buildings required for proper sanitation.

This project will install a power house that will control the power in all buildings from one point and solar panels with batteries that will reduce operational costs and enable backup power for health center operations. In addition, several other improvements will be made: 

• Paving the road all the way to the gate for better emergency vehicle access

• Expanding the laundry to support the patient workload

• Completing walkways between buildings and laundry

• Adding drainage structures to prevent flooding

• Building a retaining wall to protect the laboratory

• Installing lighting for nighttime access on walkways between buildings and in the parking area.

• Installation of air conditioning in the surgical theatre

• Other minor modifications to the mortuary and laboratory

Benefits:

• Resilience during power outages

• Improved emergency access

• Improved night time operations

• Reduce flood risk

Cost: 

• Karimu cost: $76,572