S.A.V.E.D.

Togo has been a member of the International Health Partnership and Related Initiatives (IHP+) since 2010.

Since then, the government has increased efforts to implement a national health policy that ensures comprehensive care for the Togolese population and despite this progress, access to medical care remains a major challenge for vulnerable and marginalized groups. These vulnerable groups also include children who live on the streets.

These children are often discriminate against and have no access to health care. But especially in their precarious circumstances they are exposed to complaints and diseases of all kinds. They quickly become disease carries among themselves but also within the entire population because they travel a lot and are in public places.

This is why an innovative concept is needed to facilitate access to primary care for these isolated children and to collect reliable information that can help develop a comprehensive and inclusive health policy.

Such an innovative concepts is behind our S.A.V.E.D. (Secours et Assistance á la Vie de l´Enfant Défavorisé) which has the following objective:

Promote access to primary care for marginalized and isolated children living on the streets.

The project works with different mechanism aimed at holistic and linear support that offer free of change:

• Mobile help is a pilot project supervised by doctors and nurses. First, the medical specialists assess the health status of the street children in order to enable them to receive the necessary care- directly on site, in our day centers or in severe cases also in hospitals. Follow up care is another component. Thanks to this system we reach more than 750 street children a year with more than 1,594 interventions.
• Every three month we organized office hours for children and families who live in remote and marginalized communities who have no access to health care. Our teams give you the opportunity to take advantage of free medical care and preventive measures.
  These missions enable us to collect quantitative and qualitative data on the health situation of the most vulnerable groups. We need this data not only to develop alternative strategies for care, but also to seek support from the responsible authorities. In this way we not only sensitized more than 12000 marginalized families per year but also create a platform for discussions about street children, child trafficking and children's right.



• Awareness raising measures take the form of information events and workshops on the day centers to introduce children and their families to healthy eating and hygiene.
• The psychological support is provided by our educators and psychologists. After the first session, the child psychological condition and needs are assesses, followed by individual or collective care, e.g. in the form of a discussion group. More than 375 psychological Interviews are conducted every year. This enables us to get a clear picture of the needs and difficulties of the child being cared for and to design individually tailored support methods.