Care and surgery
Training and skills transfer
Building and equipping hospitals
Prevention and screening
Emergencies and humanitarian crises
Maternal health
Togo
Axes of intervention
Care and surgery- Training and skills transfer
- Building and equipping hospitals
- Prevention and screening
Mission start date: 2012
For more than 20 years, La Chaîne de l'Espoir has been helping children in Togo by focusing on two priorities - health at school and access to surgical care - essential pillars in helping them build their future.
Background
The humanitarian emergency in Togo
6 pediatric surgeons
in the country alone, while almost half the population is under 19.
40% of young girls
are no longer in school after high school – compared with 20% of boys.
0.42 human capital index :
i.e. a Togolese child will reach only 43% of his or her adult potential in terms of health, education and nutrition.
Source: Unicef (2021 and 2022 figures), World Bank (2023 figures)
Even if the country’s economic growth has resumed after the Covid crisis, it remains very poor. And this situation is having a major impact on children, the country’s lifeblood. Nearly half the population is under 18. Poorly treated childhood illnesses, nutritional deficiencies, difficulties in accessing care, a lack of health professionals trained in the specificities of paediatric pathologies, etc., all jeopardize the health of Togo’s youngest citizens and have a major impact on their daily lives.
At the same time, there are many disparities between regions. Poverty levels are twice as high in rural areas (58.8%) as in urban areas (26.5%). Similarly, neonatal mortality is much higher in the Plateaux region (34%) than at national level (27%)*. This is due to the fact that health infrastructures are not evenly distributed across the country. Another imbalance: access to education for girls and boys.
For over twenty years, La Chaîne de L’Espoir teams have been working alongside health and education professionals in Togo to improve children’s health. Their ambition is to improve access to healthcare – even in the most remote regions – consolidate hospital infrastructures, train caregivers, and educate the youngest children so that they can truly take charge of their own health, giving them every opportunity to build a secure future.
* Sources: World Bank (2023 figures), Unicef (2020 figures)
Our humanitarian action for the children of Togo
Focus onhealth education in Togolese schools
In 2002, the sponsorship of two elementary school in the capital, Lomé, marked the start of La Chaîne de l’Espoir’s action in Togo. Since then, children’s schooling has always been at the heart of our concerns. Our ambition is to create a safe, motivating learning environment that enables all pupils to develop their potential in the best possible conditions.
So, over the years, we have continued our sponsorship actions and supported the schooling of the most vulnerable children (thanks to scholarships). We have also helped to renovate buildings, such as the Adjallé public elementary school devastated by the rains in 2011…
To take things a step further, the creation in 2019 of the “Ma santé, mon école : un enjeu collectif au Togo” project marked a turning point, which was confirmed in 2022 with the launch of phase II in 16 schools in Lomé involving 21,000 pupils.
With this program, supported by the French Development Agency (AFD), our ambition is to provide a healthy, motivating and protective school environment for pupils. This is achieved through initiatives involving children, teachers, parents and local associations alike:
- raising awareness of non-violence, water, hygiene and sanitation issues, addictions, domestic accidents, as well as sexual and reproductive health, a subject still too often taboo in the country,
- provision of equipment (hand-washing facilities, large waste garbage cans, etc.),
rehabilitation and construction of latrines in schools, - meals for vulnerable children,
- menstrual hygiene kits for young girls,
- written and oral expression workshops, etc,
- but also, since 2022, training for teachers and school heads in the early detection of learning disorders in kindergarten and primary school pupils, and improving their management in conjunction with referral health structures.
14,651 vulnerable students sponsored since 2002
500vulnerable childrencared for (meals and hygiene kits) per year
60 teachers and headteachers trained in early detection since 2021
Over the years, this program has also been an opportunity to consolidate the network of local associations working alongside us:
“Together, we have created clubs for written, oral and artistic expression in various schools in Lomé, to encourage public speaking among the youngest students, and to raise awareness of health issues. This partnership has also enabled us to grow. With the teams from La Chaîne de l’Espoir, we’ve learned an enormous amount about support and project management.”
Marielle Edorh, coordinator of the Nyagbé theatre association
Improving access to surgical care for Togolese children
Despite a health system that has been strengthening in recent years, access to care for Togolese children remains complex. Although the country has a population of 8 million, there are only six pediatric surgeons practicing mainly in Lomé. Children are therefore operated on, when they can, by teams who have not been trained in pediatric specialties.
Another problem is that many parents refuse to treat their children because of the cost. Surgical care is not covered by social security systems, and supplementary insurance is expensive. As a result, families have to bear all the costs of hospitalization and surgery – including the consumables needed for the operation (right down to the compress and plaster).
That’s why we’re mobilizing all our efforts to strengthen the Togolese health system and enable children, wherever they live, to benefit from the care they need. Since 2012, the partnership with the pediatric department of the CHU Sylvanus Olympio de Lomé (CHUSO) has led to :
- humanitarian medical-surgical missions in Togo to support and build capacity in the capital and in provincial towns that do not have a pediatric surgery department (in specialty surgery, anesthesia, nursing, etc.),
- theoretical and practical training seminars for healthcare professionals in West Africa on pediatric surgery, to enable local teams to operate independently,
- granting scholarships for DES (in surgery,
- donations of medical equipment,
- rehabilitation of the burn unit,
- the organization of itinerant humanitarian missions, known as “fairgrounds”, to care for children living in remote areas.
In the case of cardiac pathologies requiring highly complex open-heart surgery, La Chaîne de l’Espoir organizes transfers of children to France or Senegal.
“In Togo, there are around ten anesthetists, and the specialty of pediatric anesthesia doesn’t exist. On site, I have the opportunity to share my know-how with anesthesia technicians. And from one mission to the next, we see an increase in skills, especially in the care of toddlers. Seeing the families and children smile again, and the care teams mobilize with such determination, is really emotionally very powerful…”
Chantal Chazelet, a paediatric anaesthetist at Grenoble University Hospital, who has been accompanying itinerant surgical missions to Togo for ten years.
At the heart of an itinerant mission
Tohoun is located 150 kilometers from Lomé, in northern Togo, close to the Benin border. In March 2023, this Togolese town welcomed a traveling mission from La Chaîne de l’Espoir. In the space of a week, nearly 500 children were seen by pediatric surgeons, and 120 of them underwent surgery. “That’s the whole point of these itinerant missions, whose first objective is to bring surgical care closer to children living far from the capital. The second is to give the students the opportunity to operate on many children and certain pathologies that they haven’t come across much in their career to date”, explains Prosper Adigbli, Surgical Care Program Manager. ” These missions are also useful in helping people understand that certain illnesses which they think are incurable or a curse are in fact operable,” adds Espoir Datchidi, head of the Togo-Benin mission.
Since 2012:
14 itinerant humanitarian missions and 1,490 surgical operations in Togo
14 seminars as part of the DES in cardiac surgery and 10 scholarships awarded
51 medical transfers of children abroad (44 to France and 17 to Senegal)
20 years of hope in Togo
In Togo, it all began in 2002, with the first sponsorships in two elementary school in Lomé, the capital of Togo. Since then, La Chaîne de l’Espoir’s work in the country has continued to grow and develop.
Our partners
They support our humanitarian aid
in Togo
No linked partners found.
Photos: Pascal Deloche / Godong, Parmenas Awudza
