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Elizabeth Andreya Features Writer
A group of health professionals, Doctors and Nurses on a Mission recently announced that they would conduct a medical outreach in Stapleford, Mashonaland West Province, in a bid to provide free health services for vulnerable communities.
The Doctors and Nurses on a Mission project is under the health department of Angels Foundation a non-governmental organisation that works to assist orphans and vulnerable children, people living and working on the streets, people living with disabilities and elderly people in society.
The aim of the project is to provide free health care services to the vulnerable groups and to those who cannot afford to pay health care services.
Angels Foundation chief executive officer Eddie Munyoro, said their organisation hopes to help many vulnerable people through the medical outreaches at the same time assisting the country to achieve universal health coverage (UHC).
“We believe that medical outreaches can assist many vulnerable groups and also help us as a country to achieve universal health coverage though it is a bit challenging for us to run such medical outreaches.
“We believe that through these medical outreaches, lives can be saved, measures to curb non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes can be detected, monitored and also managed,” Mr Munyoro told The Herald.
The medical outreach programme compliments very well with Government efforts in providing affordable and quality healthcare services for all.
UHC is about ensuring all people and communities have access to quality health services where and when they need them, without suffering financial hardship.
We cannot achieve this as a country if we are unable to look after the health of children on the streets, elderly people who do not have anyone to look after them and homeless people.
Therefore, medical outreaches can be the answer to save these vulnerable groups.
Medical outreach programmes play a critical role in improving and extending the reach of health care through activities such as health education, case management, and basic health screening, and facilitating access to services.
These activities can directly and indirectly improve health outcomes of individuals and communities especially vulnerable groups who usually lack education on critical health issues.
Poor people experience many obstacles in obtaining health care services and for the homeless, there are additional barriers.
It is the recognition of the special health care needs of homeless people that has encouraged organisations like Angels Foundation to come up with special services for them.
In conducting these medical outreaches, it is important to provide health education to people living on the streets.
The education should include sexual health as such people are at risk of sexual abuse hence sexually transmitted diseases. Some of them just eat food without washing their hands.
These medical outreaches should also be conducted in both rural and urban areas and not only for old people’s homes and children’s homes.
We have heard of many cases where people just fall and die.
In many cases, such people usually stay alone meaning they will not have anyone to take care of them should they fall sick.
Most do not even know their medical conditions.
Medical outreach programmes can thus help everyone including those who cannot afford to pay medical fees know their health statuses.
Moreover, the medical outreaches can also just be in form of giving information and education on different medical issues so that everyone knows what to do when they face health difficulties.
A wide variety of players can provide outreach services to support UHC in the country, hospitals or health institutions, professional boards, private companies, non-governmental organisations and government departments.
With availability of resources, the Ministry of Health and Childcare could work on increasing the number of health workers both in rural and urban areas.
Better mobilisation of urban health workers to serve remote or undeserved areas is a strategy that can also improve access to health to the population in such areas.
No matter how much or how often communities are empowered, UHC will not be achieved until health systems and their diverse stakeholders are ready to engage with each other in effective ways.
It is no longer about how much health professionals know, but about how they use their knowledge and work with and through others that makes a difference.
Of course, the country is currently going through a phase of economic difficulties, and questions on where the Government will get funds to support these programmes can arise.
This can be a good place for other non-governmental organisations, charity workers and the Government to join hands and help these vulnerable groups.
Health is a basic human right.
The Right to Health is guaranteed under Article 25 of the Unilateral Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and in other regional human rights instruments, statutes, conventions as well as in the national constitutions of many African countries including our own Zimbabwean Constitution.
The Zimbabwe Constitution adopted in 2013, under section 76, guarantees the Right to Health to its citizens.
“Every Citizen and Permanent Resident of Zimbabwe has the right to access basic health-care services, which include reproductive health-care services,” it states.
Medical outreaches can help in giving the vulnerable groups affordable and quality healthcare, both in rural and urban areas. The medical outreach programmes are also conducted in other African countries to help the vulnerable.
An example is in Ghana where the Ghana Medical Program, a rural community-based programme, helps smaller communities which are deprived of basic medical access and health care.
Health is also centrally placed in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
UHC is recognised as a unifying platform for making progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 — which is to ensure health lives and promote well-being for all and all ages.
Achieving UHC and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires health systems to shift from an almost exclusively vertical, top-down and curative paradigm to one that places people at the centre of health services, as Asiya Odugleh-Kolev and John Parrish-Sprowl writing in the World Health Organisation bulletin put it.
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