Fitness instructor and influencer Rachel Kolisi has shared her experiences from a recent trip to Angola.
She said in August last year, a friend showed her a video of a young boy with polio learning to walk using sticks.
Kolisi said her ten-day visit gave her a deeper understanding of the country’s health care challenges.
“It’s impossible to put this experience fully into words. But spending ten days in Angola gave me a depth of perspective I wasn’t prepared for,” she said.
“Entire villages are wiped out by malaria year after year. Some mothers don’t name their children until they turn two, knowing there’s a real chance they may not survive that long,” she added.
She said that in many rural areas of Angola, families walk up to two days to reach basic medical care.
“Some parents push sick children on bicycles because there is no other option,” she said.
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Bringing healthcare to remote villages
During the visit, Kolisi said she worked with a health and safety organisation to bring essential care to remote communities.
She said that in three days, they reached five villages, assessed and treated more than 100 patients, treated eight children for malaria, and provided crutches to three people with post-polio paralytic syndrome.
“[We] transported two critically ill children to hospital and delivered HIV, malaria and TB education to over 200 people,” she said.
Kolisi’s ongoing philanthropy
In August last year, Kolisi helped nearly 100 schoolchildren with vision testing and new spectacles.
“Fifteen were identified as needing glasses, and yesterday we delivered and fitted them. One of the girls said she knows she’s destined for greatness, and her marks are so good, but she believed she was meant to be blind, because she couldn’t see the board and would copy off the girl next to her,” Kolisi wrote at the time.
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