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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke-Senior Health Reporter
As the Government moves towards the attainment of universal health coverage, the inclusion of communities in the improvement of service delivery could drive the agenda of leaving no one and no place behind in health care.
The Ministry of Health and Child Care has been on a drive to improve maternal and child care through the Results Based Financing (RBF) project.
The project is being co-financed by the World bank and the Government of Zimbabwe and implemented by the Ministry of Health and Child Care in partnership with Cordaid.
This has seen health authorities in Mashonaland Central engaging with apostolic sects to ensure they have access to proper maternal services that reduce maternal and child mortality.
Speaking to the media recently, Mashonaland Central Provincial Medical director Dr Clement Chuma said the RBF had helped to remove some of the barriers that were hindering access to health care for communities.
“The idea for RBF is to improve maternal and child health so we encourage our managers at the district to think outside the box on how to improve access. Most of the time people speak negatively about religious objectors of different sects but as the Ministry of Health, we think we have more in common with them than differences,” he said.
“If you go to any shrine of any apostolic sect, one thing that is conspicuous are birth camps (chidziro). They want to make sure that mothers are assisted during delivery and that is what we want also. We should be able to cooperate rather than fight. We have approached some of them to say we know we have differences, but we also have a common denominator, that is to make sure that mothers have delivered safely.”
Dr Chuma said the birth tents at the shrines were small and unhygienic, which was not conducive for a safe delivery.
Hence the sects had been approached and offered assistance to build proper structures which could accommodate the mother and those attending to her delivery.
“They saw sense in it and instead of being antagonistic, they constructed something quite good. Later we visited them and we encouraged them to use proper delivery beds and other equipment and we assisted them to get these. After a while we encouraged them to recruit a proper nurse. When they told us they could not afford to pay the nurse, we provided one for them,” said Dr Chuma.
The facility is now being assisted in terms of quality assurance to ensure that more women continue to deliver safely.
Dr Chuma said there was hope that more facilities would be established in the province to cater for all sects.
“For now, we are concentrating on conducting deliveries, on which we think they are doing very well. We are trying to see if we can identify other facilities belonging to these sects and try to make sure that this same concept is done. Instead of delivering in the tent, they can build a structure. As time goes on, we can start talking about taking paracetamol and probably things will keep improving,” he added.
The RBF project has a particular thrust of community participation, which involves working with village health workers to engage communities for better maternal and child health outcomes.
To strengthen the community participation, it has also supported community health centre committees that work with the clinics to improve health services in that area. Dr Chuma said this had seen more women coming to health centres for antenatal, delivery, post-natal care. It had also contributed to an increase in child immunisation.
Online Reporter