The health post attached to our mission at Dakar opened for a free community health day at the end of June, and more than four hundred people came through its doors between seven in the morning and five in the afternoon.
Screening for hypertension and diabetes, antenatal checks, vaccination catch-up for children, and a malaria prevention session for mothers were all provided. Two visiting doctors joined the local nursing staff, and a dozen volunteers from the district kept the queues moving and the water jugs full.
The mission serves a district where Catholics are a small minority. Nobody was asked their religion at the door, and the question did not come up. Brother Thomas, who coordinates the post, put it simply afterwards: people arrive unwell and leave treated, and that is the whole of it.