Kaédi Hospital

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Smaller patient room, treatment room on the right

The Kaédi Hospital ( Arabic مستشفى كيهيدي, DMG Mustašfā Kaihaidī , French Hôpital de Kaédi ) is the regional hospital in Kaédi on the Senegal River . It is the largest hospital in southern Mauritania outside of the state capital Nouakchott . In 1995 it was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for its architectural concept based on traditional construction methods .

architecture

The extensive area of ​​the hospital, enclosed by a wall, is located on the northwestern outskirts at the junction of the road leading to the west towards Bogué . Two older, long rectangular buildings made of hollow cement blocks parallel to the street in the east of the site contain patient admission, examination and hospital rooms. The design by the Italian architect Fabrizio Carola on behalf of the Association pour le Développement d'une Architecture et d'un Urbanisme Africains (ADAUA) envisaged an extension to the west, which consists of numerous individual buildings that are connected to one another via half-open corridors. The first work on the site began in 1981, and the facility was largely completed by 1989.

The patient rooms, which are closed except for window openings, and the largely open and only pavilion-like roofed common rooms of the relatives are similar to the round huts (tukul) of an African village, at first glance, arbitrarily distributed over the square. The basic plan of the expansion planned for 120 beds resembles a flower tendril. The scattered buildings with large open spaces in between are intended to create a familiar situation for patients and relatives, similar to their personal living environment, and reduce the risk of germ transmission through the distances between the units. Toilets and water points in the rear are integrated into free-standing, open blocks of spiral-shaped walls.

Coupled node. The corridors and treatment rooms lead off in a star shape
The connecting corridors are also quite dark during the day

Over the circular or oval base of the lounges, dome shells made of burnt bricks arch in layers of rings, the round shapes of which are modern variants of the Nubian vault . As with the traditional Nubian vault construction, formwork and falsework was dispensed with in order not to need wood that is scarce in the savannah . The large domed rooms are dimensioned for 12 beds. The treatment rooms have a lens-shaped floor plan. During construction it turned out that the rooms were too dark, so small fields were walled in with glass blocks in the domes.

The connecting passages are covered by elegant, pointed barrel vaults . Side wall slots ensure subdued light incidence and ventilation. The wall openings forced the bricks to be walled up in horizontal layers, which necessitated wooden formwork when building the corridors. The massive walls prevent the rooms from being overheated by the midday sun. The daytime temperatures reach 45 ° C in the summer months.

Many of the trees provided in the plan and in some cases also used were used by the relatives of the patients as firewood for cooking, so no further plantings were made. Goats keep the grass short.

The clay bricks fired on site contributed to reducing costs and corresponded to the goals of the ADAUA group of architects operating in West Africa, who use dome shapes to implement inexpensive and ecologically adapted building projects. This happens at a time when the majority of Mauritania's population, which was still predominantly nomadic when the country gained independence in 1960, has become sedentary and housing is now urgently needed in the cities. At the same time, local craftsmen are to be trained in the implementation of these new construction techniques. The projects carried out by ADAUA in the 1970s and 1980s are intended as models for further dissemination.

The total cost should be around four million US dollars provided by the European Development Fund. The Mauritanian authorities did not provide any information about the actual costs. No tests of the brick quality were carried out during the construction period, which would have been urgently required for a project of this size and with an experimental character. The bricks, some of which were not sufficiently fired in several small kilns nearby, caused some cracks in the building in the following years and are not sufficiently water-resistant. Some wall openings had to be closed by the users in the lower area because the wind had blown in too much sand.

Medical supplies

Empty pavilions for relatives in the back. Instead, they camp outside. Toilet facility on the right

An operating theater was set up, the only room that is closed and equipped with air conditioning , there is also a pediatric department , a department for ophthalmology , a maternity ward and technical ancillary rooms. The client was the Mauritanian Ministry of Health. The clinic director Abba Ould Alem (as of October 2008) manages the public institution, which has been autonomous since 2006.

Kaédi is the capital of the Gorgol administrative region ; the hospital is used to care for the (according to the 2000 census) around 250,000 inhabitants of the rural district. Patients from the Brakna district also come here. There are also four simple health centers in Gorgol. Except for the asphalt roads to Bogué and Selibabi , the other traffic routes are in poor condition.

At the time of construction in the 1980s, the country's only major hospital in Nouakchott had 500 beds. The existing facility at the time was described as inadequate and poorly maintained. There is no precise information about the quality of medical equipment and care at the hospital in Kaédi. In 1997 the staff consisted of 2 doctors, including a surgeon, 17 medical assistants, 7 nurses, 3 midwives and 3 house technicians. As in the rest of the city, there is a problem with garbage disposal on the hospital grounds. Much of the building was empty in October 2010. For 2008, an occupancy rate of 43 percent was given, slightly more than other regional hospitals, which have an average utilization of 37 percent.

In individual cases, malnourished children from remote areas reach the hospital to be provided with food for a few days.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Building Toward Community: ADAUA's work in West Africa.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ArchNet@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / archnet.org  
  2. ^ Hôpital Régional de Kaédi: Des défis à relever. ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Quotidien de Nouakchott, October 8, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.quotidien-nouakchott.com
  3. ↑ Robert E. Handloff (Ed.): Mauritania. A country study. Library of Congress, Washington, 2nd ed. 1990, p. 78
  4. ↑ Kane Boubacar: Report N ° II D'Étude sur les Hopitaux Regionaux. ( Memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Ministere de la Santé et des Affaires Sociales, June 1997, p. 15
  5. ^ Hôpital Régional de Kaédi: Des défis à relever. ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Quotidien de Nouakchott, October 8, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.quotidien-nouakchott.com
  6. ↑ Faces of progress in tackling malnutrition in Mauritania. UNICEF, July 14, 2009

Coordinates: 16 ° 9 ′ 1.6 ″  N , 13 ° 30 ′ 24.2 ″  W.