Georg-Gottlob-House at Jahaly Health Centre
The “Georg-Gottlob-Haus” was opened in March 1998 as extension of “Jahaly Health Centre”. The building itself is a synonym for help and rescue all over the remote areas of the Central River Division in The Gambia.
The name of the house goes back to Georg Gottlob, student of psychology, who died from severe multiple sclerosis disease in 1988 at the age of 22 years. In 1989 his mother Hildegard Gottlob founded the Georg-Gottlob-Foundation under his name.
1992 another “Georg-Gottlob-House” with 24 apartments was opened in Essen as a new self-dtermined home for assisted living of young disabled – most of them suffering from multiple sclerosis.
As the company of the co-founders of “Project Aid The Gambia “, Matthias Ketteler and Frank Heuer, among others worked in domestic home-care and provided home-care to various residents of the Georg-Gottlob-House in Essen (and still do today), a first contact with the Georg Gottlob Foundation was established.
Hildegard Gottlob was immediately impressed by the work done by Project Aid in The Gambia, and also of the idea of an extension of Jahaly Health Centre with a maternity ward in which the local women were able to give birth under hygienic conditions, rather than on the clay floors of their huts.
In 1998 the Georg Gottlob Foundation supported the construction with a donation and provides up today financial contributions to the operation of Georg-Gottlob-House at Jahaly Health Centre.
Every year, in the Georg-Gottlob-House more than three hundred children are being treated as in-patients and up to one hundred children are born here. Until today, we look back on a good cooperation and hope to keep in memory the name Georg Gottlob also in distant Africa.
A portrait of Georg Gottlob showing the five year old boy still being healthy can be found in the Georg-Gottlob-House at Jahaly Health Centre as “Georg Gottlob, little boy” and another one showing him in the age of 22 years in the entrance area of the Georg-Gottlob-House in Essen/Germany.
For more information on the Georg Gottlob Foundation please visit their website http://www.gottlob-stiftung.info/ (German only)