World Doctors report on their mission in Ethiopia

"Attat Hospital was without water for days," reports the dentist Andreas Ploner from Bolzano, Italy, after his return from Ethiopia. Together with his wife Irene, he went back to the Attat Hospital in February, where he had already treated dental patients and trained the local staff in previous years.

Since 2009, the association World Doctors has been supporting this medical facility, among others, whose expansion and renovation they have made possible. Doctors and craftsmen from South Tyrol work there several times a year.

"But this time," reports Andreas Ploner, "it was different. The lack of water made working in the hospital very difficult” Irene said “For days, not a single drop of water came out of the water pipe. We set up buckets to collect valuable rainwater."

The medical director, Dr. Rita Schiffer, who has been working in Attat for over 20 years, was desperate. "Attat Hospital has always had two 105-meter-deep wells of its own. But now the water level has dropped so much that the pumps are no longer able to pump the water up. The city water is completely unreliable and insufficient. This week it has been down for 4 days. The neighbouring village of Gubrie has grown so much since the opening of the University that the water supply is no longer sufficient for the population."

"Now we have to act," says the electrician Peter Niederfriniger, who, together with his fellow craftsmen from the Venosta Valley Luis Spechtenhauser, Karl Telser and Isidor Grass, worked at Attat Hospital in January to install generators and guarantee a round-the-clock power supply. "There were already problems with the water supply, but we hadn't expected the situation to worsen so quickly. Now we have to test the wells and take the utmost precautions to clean them so that they don't collapse.

As a long-term solution, a new deep water well must be drilled into deeper geological layers in order to access the groundwater. The implementation of this project is very urgent.

World Doctors will support this project and appreciates your donations!