Annual Report 2022-2024:

The most important and sad news of this reporting period is that HfKNH has filed the dissolution application with the local court. Details below.

Our street children project with ACAP:

Our last initiative for this project was a vaccination campaign against HIV/AIDS and also funds for contraceptives for the potentially vulnerable girls at the school. The program was completed but not all funds were used as some children had to be excluded from the program because they did not attend school regularly as promised. The remaining funds were redirected to the art program of ACAP.

In one of last year's typhoons, the school was flooded and had to be closed. Until the new school can be occupied - there are already plans for this in the near future - the working mode has been changed in such a way that now the children no longer come to the ACAP school, but ACAP helpers and teachers now visit the children in their residential districts.

As a further action, we supported ACAP in the food program set up by the local government, which covers 50% of the costs of approx. € 8,000. The aim here was to provide the malnutrition of slum children with proper nutrition through a 120-day program by providing nutritious but affordable food. This food provision goes hand in hand with a workshop for parents on nutritional advice and practice in cooking of the "right" food.

Due to special relationships, the ACAP management was able to organize an auction with paintings of the sponsored children, where 8 paintings could be sold.

Our Hydrocephalus Project with HFP:

The Corona pandemic still has its after-effects today. The network of our partner organization in the Philippines, the Hydrocephalus Foundation of the Philippines (HFP), seems to have thinned out during and after the pandemic. Many doctors and nurses were recruited mainly from the USA and Canada, but also from Germany and are now missing locally. The new doctors and nurses in the clinics and barangay health centers are not all aware of the possibility that they could have turned to HFP for support for their indigenous in hydrocephalus patients.

Although the frequency of hydrocephalus has not changed, or even increased because of Corona, HFP had performed a total of only 155 surgeries in 2022-2024 (until November). This is compared to 2019, the year before Corona, with 193 operations and 88 (2020) and 95 (2021) operations during the Corona period. It is unknown how many patient children remained untreated and probably died. Of these 155 patients, we supported 56 patients. Before Corona, we had a much higher average of about 36 patients per year.

HFP is now working intensively on the reactivation of the information network.

Fortunately, however, the post-operative physiotherapy program we initiated was intensified. During his patient visits at the beginning of 2023 (the first since Corona), the our president (GH) was able to ascertain that the physio brochure we had prepared was made available to all patient mothers and is used for the indicated  exercises. HFP has further hired a physiotherapist, initially on a trial basis, who visually goes through the exercises with the parents via "Facetime/ZOOM" and makes appropriate corrections and takes minutes of these sessions. After two to three sessions, the parents are trained so that they can continue on their own. GH had joined two such meetings to get an impression of the effectiveness of this approach and found it very helpful. About 40 patients were treated in this way and this is now to be extended to all patients.

In order to improve the post-operative follow-up care in more depth, we had developed a plan according to which a nurse employed by us ("Roaming Nurse") should visit all the patients we supported in person periodically for a certain period of time. Experience has shown that many patient parents do not make such visits due to conditions on site (family circumstances, traffic, distance to the hospital and sometimes also a lack of understanding of the necessity). independently.

However, a cost estimate for this has shown that such a campaign would demand our entire annual donations and we would then not be able to support any new patients. As the second-best solution, our Philippine partner organization has been contacting all new patients by video call at least eight times after surgery for some time and providing us with reports on this.

In a vote at an extraordinary general meeting (MV), some of our members voted against the ideally desirable but not financially feasible action of a "roaming nurse" in view of the second-best, feasible solution at hand. Compromises were sought within the board, unfortunately without result.

As a result, important and active members of the board have resigned, but partly also for reasons of age and successors had to be found for now vacant positions

Not all prescribed positions could be filled despite intensive efforts. The association, as in so many other support associations, lacks "younger blood" and the remaining members have now reached a critical age.

Decision to dissolve HfKNH

In the general meeting of 17.July.2024, it was therefore unanimously decided to dissolve HfKNH.

Furthermore, it was decided that the dissolution should be carried out gradually in order to work off the existing association assets in a meaningful way in the sense of the association's purpose.

It was agreed that the association's assets should be distributed to the current partner organizations HFP and ACAP in accordance with the stated donation preferences in accordance with $12(2) of the statutes.

What happens now:

An agreement has been reached with Child-Help, the organization that provides our local partner organization (HFP) with the Indian shunts for surgery, that

• any amounts that may not be called up/transferred before the expiry of the legal liquidation period will be transferred to the German section of Child-Help (https://child-help.de/), with the proviso that the funds will be forwarded to HFP in a verifiable manner;
• Child-Help is ready to take over our entire hydrocephalus program;
• the street children's programme is discontinued in the absence of a successor organization.
• 
  

HfKNH hopes that some – hopefully all of our loyal donors – will be interested in a long-term continuation of our hydrocephalus programme.

HfKNH therefore asks to transfer donations for "our" Hydrocephalus cooperation with HFP from now on to the donation account of Child-Help e.V. -Germany with the reference: "For Hydrocephalus Program Philippines"

Child-Help e.V.

Stadtsparkasse Bad Pyrmont
IBAN: DE13 2545 1345 0051 0851 73
BIC: NOLADE21PMT