Overview
The Simango Rural Health Centre is located in Kazangula District, 60km from Livingstone hospital. The health centre serves a population of 10,000 across 35 villages. With some some villages are as far as 40km from the health facility with no means of transport.
The centre is staffed by 2 nurses, an environmental health technician, a clinical officer and 2 Community Health Assistants. The team offer monthly outreach services to communities and diagnose and treat patients who visit the centre.
Biggest challenges at health centre
The health centre has good access to power and water. However the facility and surrounding communities face the following key challenges
- Poor infrastructure
The facility has temporary structures in place for their mothers shelters. Expectant mothers can stay for up to one month to ensure they can travel safely to the facility
- Limited availability of medication
- Poor access to water and sanitation in rural communities
Majority of households in Simango are collecting their drinking water from an unprotected source. This has negative health implications such as diarrhoea, stomach pains and bilharzia. These health issues are extremely prominent in these communities
- Transport Links
Simango Rural Health Centre is responsible for providing medical services to households up to 40km from the centre. These communities do not have reliable transportation links to reach the clinic, making it difficult for individuals to access these services.
- Most common health issues
Diarrhoea, Respiratory, Musco-skeletal, Skin
Our role
On Call Africa works with the Rural Health Centre to identify its biggest challenges and assess needs both at the facility, and within the communities in it’s catchment area. We place volunteer doctors in the facility, where they work alongside existing nurses and Community Health Workers offering diagnosis and treatment, and supporting outreach activities, while conducting assessments, mapping and developing clear implementation plans for On Call Africa, Ministry of Health and partners to take forward. We also work with partners to deliver public health interventions that meet the individual health needs of each community.
On Call Africa have trained 8 Community Health Workers from within these communities to strengthen the existing health systems, ensuring that patients have access to medical advice, and referrals when needed. The Community Health Workers have been provided bicycles to enable them to carry out home visits for sparsely populated communities. We have also successfully supported evidence building for the need for a nurse to be placed at Chinlozya, one of our partner health posts, due to its distance from the health facility and the high population density
We are also working with partner organisations to develop programmes to provide telemedicine to the health facility, and to address poor water and sanitation, as well as transport links within the catchment area.
