About AMREF
AMREF is Africa’s leading health development organisation. Working with some of Africa’s most disadvantaged communities, AMREF enables African communities to access better health; saving and improving lives every day.
AMREF believes in an African-led response to the continent’s health problems. Our headquarters are in Kenya and 97% of our staff are African. We’re rooted in Africa and we appreciate the health problems that African communities are facing.
For example, there are acute shortages of African health workers at every level. In fact, according to the World Health Organisation, Africa needs one million more health workers to face this immediate crisis. In the UK there is one doctor for every 435 people. In Sudan there is one doctor for every 100,000 people. AMREF is tackling this problem by training volunteers who have been elected by their community to receive health training. These ‘Community health Workers’ then have the knowledge, skills and equipment to provide basic health care in African communities that have no other access to health services. Last year, we trained nearly 10,000 community health workers across Africa who have saved and improved millions of lives between them.
AMREF will make your sponsorship money go further! You’d be amazed at what we can do with even a small amount of money:
• £10 could train one Community Health Worker, who will then spread healthcare advice and messages throughout the wider community.
• £20 could teach 4 small communities how to prevent trachoma, a major cause of blindness in Africa.
• £30 provides a community health worker with the equipment they need to carry out their work, such as bandages, oral rehydration tablets and latex gloves.
• £60 is enough to buy a bicycle for a dedicated community health worker, enabling him or her to visit even more patients.
• £100 will help to equip a laboratory in a Somali health centre allowing faster and more accurate diagnoses of illness, so appropriate treatment can be given in hours rather than days.
• £200 could train a community member to construct shallow wells and boreholes.
• £250 will refurbish a small health outpost in rural Somalia, enabling people in remote locations to access improved medical care.
• £1,250 could pay for the operation and upkeep of an HIV/AIDS testing and treatment centre in Tanzania, capable of testing 750 people, for one month.
• £8,000 could pay for a well serving 15,000 people in Northern Uganda.
By raising money for AMREF you can be sure that your money is being applied where the need is greatest to help poor African communities overcome the health problems that keep them in poverty.
BETTER HEALTH FOR AFRICA
Our history
AMREF was founded in 1957 as the Flying Doctors of East Africa by three plastic surgeons: Sir Archibald Mcindoe, Sir Michael Wood and Dr Thomas Rees.
The Flying Doctor Service, remains an important part of AMREF’s work. It is responsible for carrying out emergency evacuations and for providing AMREF's Clinical Outreach service to the most remote and disadvantaged areas in Africa.
Through the Clinical Outreach Service, AMREF's three specialist surgeons fly to remote rural hospitals and health outposts weekly. Over three to five days, they perform 40 to 100 operations which local medical teams participate in and AMREF staff lecture at the hospitals. Over 5,000 consultations take place each year and 3,000 medical staff are trained through the service annually.
Since its inception, AMREF has grown into the largest African health development organisation. AMREF now consists of a staff of more than 800, of whom 97% are African.
AMREF UK began in 1961 as one of the key AMREF offices based in Europe and North America to fund AMREF's work in Africa. Its role is to raise funds for AMREF's African operations, to raise awareness of the issues of African poverty and health in the UK, and to network with major donors, academic institutions and other NGOs.