Stanley was in a coma when he was brought to Gladys, a volunteer Community Health Worker. Carried on the shoulders of six friends, he'd been sick for days from severe diarrhea and vomiting. With cholera running rampant throughout Zimbabwe, it was obvious to Gladys that Stanley needed urgent medical treatment.
Normally he'd have been immediately hooked up to intravenous fluids—the quickest and most effective way to replenish the fluid he'd lost. But Gladys didn't have an IV and isn't qualified to use one. All she had was the Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) Merlin's team had taught her to mix and administer. So she set to work.
Staying up through the night, Gladys managed the difficult task of spoon feeding 20 liters of ORS into Stanley, manually forcing him to swallow the life-saving solution.
Seven hours later, he awoke from his coma, sat up in bed and said: "My name is Stanley, I'm 39 years old and I nearly died."
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Just three hours of Merlin training in preventing, diagnosing and treating cholera had given Gladys the skills she needed to save a life.
In a little over six months cholera claimed the lives of over 4,000 people in Zimbabwe. Infecting almost 100,000, this was the worst outbreak in Africa for 15 years. An acute lack of clinics, drugs, clean water, sanitation and most importantly health workers meant the country simply couldn't cope as the epidemic reached crisis point.
Merlin's teams established Oral Rehydration Points (ORPs) throughout the worst-affected counties and trained thousands of volunteers like Gladys.
Training local people to save local lives is at the heart of Merlin's work and it's thanks to people like Gladys that we were able to reach 500,000 Zimbabweans.
Find out more about our work in Zimbabwe