January 29, 2024 Minutes
The Board Meeting was held on Tuesday, January 29, 2024, at the office of Lee Jennings.
Paul Shumpert called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. Cindy Shumpert opened the meeting with
prayer. Present were Paul & Cindy Shumpert, David Kearns, Lee Jennings,
George Faile, Peter Faile, Sylvia Washington, Laurie Douglas, and Martha Cates.
The financial report was given by Paul. Much of this was reviewed in an e mail to the board. For the year we spent $172,000 and donations totaled 105,000.00, of which $43,700 was from the IMB for an autoclave and anesthesia machine purchase. We have a balance of $850,000 increased over last year largely due to market gains. Paul reiterated that our primary goal is to help BMC provide good medical care giving a good witness to the love of Jesus and as a platform to share about Jesus.
The board approved $2,000 per month for Dr. Peter Van Dingenen to be at BMC for 3 months and work with Dr. Haun. He plans to later go back to Burkina Faso.
Dr. Anastasia Furtak has just finished 3 months of service at BMC for which we provided support similar to Dr. Van Dingenen.
Alafia Tinga (TB village) work on 7 duplex houses was completed in October 2023 with future work done with local labor as needed.
Discussed upgrades to house 7 or 8 primarily adding a stove and one or two air conditioning units. Frequently one of these houses are needed due to house 6 being full.
The board approved raises for house 6 staff consistent with Ghana government pay scale.
The container coordinated by Dr. Jim Howard is due to arrive the first week of February. We contributed $5000 of this expense.
We are paying nurse Z. Inusuah a monthly stipend through October of this year to continue his work at BMC providing wound care and skin grafting services. We will consider renewing him for another year before the current term ends.
We discussed trading in our current Nissan truck for another vehicle vs keeping it and how to arrange transportation for larger volunteer groups.
We nominated Dr. Jamie Lynn as a new board member. Cindy & Sylvia will discuss this opportunity with her.
Charity fund changes were discussed. 2D echoes will be done in Tamale and we are exploring options for those children that need cardiac surgery.
We discussed website management and possible changes.
Eye and ENT clinic work was discussed which has been a positive addition for BMC. Some cataract surgeries have already been done. The neonatal ICU has also functioned well providing a welcome upgrade to infant care.