We invite you to take the time to read our latest communication, sent to all our members, which presents our activity report for 2020, in addition to giving the latest news on our current projects.
Communication – Amis de la Saint-Camille – Septembre 2021
Along with two St. Camille network partners in Europe and the United States, we have been active in presenting Grégoire and St. Camille as candidates for international awards. Last year, Grégoire was the recipient of the Guislain Prize “Breaking the Chains of Stigma in Mental Health”. Now he has just received the Geneva Prize for “Human Rights in Psychiatry”. He is also a finalist for the Aurora Foundation’s “Humanitarian of the Year” Award. These well-deserved international recognitions help publicize the work of Grégoire and his team for the benefit of Africans affected by mental illness.
To meet the need for increased services at the Saint-Camille Hospital in Bouaké, Ivory Coast, we were
able to take advantage of a donation requested from the Louise Grenier Foundation. An unused space
will be converted into a maternity ward with a delivery room, mother-child services and pre- and post-
natal classes. Two midwives paid by the Ivorian government will be assigned to this facility. Budget
allocated: $17,000.
Mission Inclusion has offered us funding for social reintegration activities. Following discussions with
Grégoire, a six-hectare cashew tree plantation and vegetable garden is being developed on the large
plot of land of the new treatment and recovery centre in Sokodé, Togo. The project will be carried out
with the significant contribution of patients. They will be paid at the end of their treatment, and their
work will also help prepare them for their return to their farming environment: it will improve their
physical fitness, help them regain good working habits, etc. The men will do the heavy work (clearing,
land preparation, planting, etc…) while the women will do work that is typical for them in rural
environments (planting, sowing, harvesting, food preparation, etc…). An irrigation system is included in
the project. Cost: $39,900.
Addition of new services to the Health Center of Adjarra in the suburbs of Porto-Novo, the country’s capital. Following the recent shipment of a container in partnership with Collaboration Santé Internationale and the Roncalli Foundation, we were able to send the equipment needed to set up a dentistry service. A small surgical center has also been added thanks to the involvement of Sister Monique Bourget and her family’s foundation. This Quebec nun, a doctor living in Benin, is making an important contribution to the Saint-Camille after her long experience in development in Brazil. This center offers physical health care at no cost to the patients of Saint Camille, and at reduced cost to the local population. We financed its construction in 2012-2013. Obstetrics, general medicine, optometry, a laboratory, ultrasound, dentistry and a small surgery center tests are already available. A Brazilian surgical mission is planned for next September.
Medical and dental equipment and supplies, medicines, storage equipment and bicycles will be loaded
into a container from Collaboration Santé Internationale for shipment to Cotonou, Benin. The bicycles
come from the NGO Cyclo-Nord-Sud. The Roncalli International Foundation will cover shipping costs.
The Adjarra Health Center in Benin will be the major beneficiary, while the shipment will also meet
some of the needs of treatment and recovery centres in Benin and Togo. The contents of the container
have been provided at no charge, but their value exceeds $100,000; the shipping costs are $11,000.
