Joyce, Malawi

Joyce, 37, gave birth in the summer of 2019 and brought her baby daughter – Rose – to the clinic on her bicycle. Still tiny, Rose had been coughing and sneezing and was running a temperature.

In the clinic, a nurse used a stethoscope to listen to her lungs and heart and measured her temperature with an ear thermometer donated by our corporate partner Janssen. Her mother, Joyce, was given a prescription for amoxicillin (antibiotic) syrup and paracetamol and told that if Rose didn’t improve in a couple of days, she should take her to hospital.

"We have to try and do the best we can with what we have."

- Joyce -

When we met Joyce, she was in the pharmacy, picking up amoxicillin syrup donated through IHP. But there was a problem – the pharmacy had no paracetamol suitable for children. Instead, the assistant cut adult tablets into pieces and asked Joyce to feed this to Rose a little at a time.

“I know it’s not perfect, and we don’t want to be giving adult medicines to children,” the assistant told us, “but when the alternative is to not treat them at all, what do you do? We make difficult decisions every day. It is a balancing act, and we have to try and do the best we can with what we have.”

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£5 can help us to give 15 people treatment

£20 will provide 16 children with antibiotics

£100 will provide 83 pregnant women with life saving medicine.

£450 will provide am emergency medical kit to 60 families.

Whatever you give, you could be making a life-changing, even life-saving difference to someone every month.

See how your donation makes a difference

£5 is enough to source and send £600 worth of medical supplies a year to people in need; enough to help approximately 50 people around the world.

£10 is enough to source and send £1,200 worth of medical supplies a year to people in need; enough to help approximately 100 people around the world.

£25 is enough to provide around 750 treatments in a year, helping approximately 250 people in need; and for some, is the difference between life & death.

£100 is enough to provide medicines and supplies for approximately 1,000 people a year living in disaster-hit and vulnerable communites.

Whatever you give, you could be making a life-changing, even life-saving difference to someone every month.

Help us deliver access to medicine all year round

Join our giving community and help us transform the health outlook of families every single month.

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