In May of 2006 the Café prepared 25 Pentium III computers and sent them off to the Phebe hospital in Monrovia Liberia West Africa.
The history of Phebe goes back to 1888 and 1896 when its early mission board recognized the need for medical care for Liberia. Construction of Phebe Hospital at the Muhlenberg compound in Harrisburg began in 1915. The first floor was completed in 1921, and a second story in 1926, making it a 32-bed hospital. Phebe served the whole costal area, including many people from Monrovia, although it was difficult to find doctors for continuous service.
On January 1, 1921, the Phebe Hospital Training School for Nursing in Liberia, West Africa, was officially opened, with the first three graduates in 1926. The first young man to graduate from the Medical assistants training course occurred in 1932. Since these beginnings, 1,217 nurses and para-medical professionals have graduated from the training program up to June 2001. That number of graduates has risen by forty-eight (48) as of 2005. The present enrollment of the Nursing School is seventy-eight (78).
Phebe Hospital & School of Nursing, the only Government Referral and Training Hospital, strategically located in central Liberia, has lots of expectations when it comes to providing quality health services to the people of Liberia as well as outputting well trained Para-Medical Health Personnel (Nurses, Midwives, Nurse Anesthetists and Laboratory Technicians). That expectation continues to increase with the advancement of technology in the computer world around us. Unfortunately, Phebe is not making maximum use of this technology, not because the equipment is not available, but because the training to use this equipment is lacking.
In the early planning o the curriculum for the Phebe Training Programs, computers technology was not considered, probably because it was not wide spread as it is today. As a result, the opportunity for computer literacy was not extended to the early graduates of the school. This situation equally threatens the current enrollment of the school and needs to be urgently addressed if our students must graduate well equipped to match the demand of today’s market.
Today, there are 78 Students enrolled at the Phebe Training Programs. About 46 of this number (Laboratory Technicians and Midwives) have course duration of two (2) years. Registered Nurses and Nurse Anesthetists have a long duration. Phebe intends to include computer literacy program in the curriculum of the training program thus giving the present and future enrollments the opportunity to enhance their knowledge and skills via the computer technology.
A computer lab with twenty-five (25) computers equipped with MS-Windows and MS-Office was needed. This would enable Phebe to train the student in Computer Awareness & Maintenance, MS-Windows, MS-Word, MS-Excel and MS-PowerPoint.
Phebe had the requisite training facilities and staff but lacked the necessary computer hardware. Café was able to accommodate these needs by sending its computers through Global Health Ministries, to Phebe.
|
