1. To improve the level of health of the population of the neighbourhood, through education, information and awareness of the principals of primary health care and how to avoid illness.
2. To use primary health care as a tool for evangelisation in order to reach the population of the neighbourhood.
3. To choose and train Christians for this work
4. To diminish the maternal and infant mortality rate in the neighbourhood.
   

For the moment, the Centre is primarily involved in the education of mothers and follow-up of all children below five years of age. It is open three mornings a week – Monday to Wednesday. This ministry is the Gospel with two hands – embracing physical and spiritual needs – because we profit from the teachings that we give on primary health care topics, to share at the same time, the Gospel. We receive all mothers, regardless of their religion and at the moment we have between 20 and 25 children a week. After a teaching for the mothers, we weigh the children, give appropriate advice and, if necessary, refer them to the hospital. Through this, we are also able to target those children who are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition, or children who are sick and need to be sent for treatment. We teach the women how to prepare meals rich in protein and we do food demonstrations, using ingredients found locally and affordable for the population. The most common type of malnutrition found here in Koutiala is caused by a lack of protein and is primarily due to ignorance and not to poverty. Our struggle at the Centre is against this same ignorance and the fatalism which is inherent in Islam and we hope that through our work, many children will be saved and that the mothers would rise up and react aggressively in order to preserve the health of their children. Many children have already been healed from malnutrition and today are healthy and this is a good witness for the other mothers as well as giving them hope for their malnourished children. Where it is necessary, we also make home visits for malnourished children in order to evaluate the family situation and see whether or not the mothers really put into practice what they have learnt at the Centre.

We moved onto our own land in January 2006 and we have started the building work, but the work is not yet finished and we lack the main two-storey building. For the moment, we are doing the teachings under an outside hangar, while we await funding in order to continue with the building.

In reply to outside invitations, we also exercise this same ministry to women and children in different villages surrounding Koutiala and we carry out training seminars for the health care workers and others interested in being trained in primary health care.

PRAYER SUBJECTS :

• For qualified staff committed to this work.
• For a regular financial support for the monthly expenses of the Centre. (At the moment we do not have enough to cover our monthly expenses)
• For good fruit to be produced through our work at the Centre – that we would be salt and light for this darkened neighbourhood.
• For a strategy as to how to better look after the orphans that we often meet through our work.
• That we would find the necessary funding in order to finish the building work for the Centre.