Our Youth Programme is now a central part of our structures with youth representatives sitting on national and district committees and decision-making bodies. The programme equips youths with information and skills on Sexual Reproductive health issues and rights. Youths are empowered to advocate and lobby for their sexual and reproductive health rights. It strengthens young people’s participation in decisions and actions related to reproductive health. The programme enhances civic society responses to youth reproductive health needs through increasing the young people’s capacity to articulate and organize themselves around those needs.
Once the youths are trained they come up with locally initiated activities which use participatory methodologies to disseminate information to peers and the community. The youth programme mainly targets in and out of school youths and operates in ten CWGH districts- Bulawayo, Hwange, Filabusi, Esigodini, Victoria falls, Tsholotsho, Chikwaka, Acturus, Plumtree and Mutare. Recent activities Over the years, the CWGH has exhibited at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair under different themes. This year’s exhibition, the sixth in collaboration with the National AIDS Council and the AID Service Organisations, ran under the theme “Unlocking our investment potential: Universal Access and Human rights. Together we can make it”. This was consistent with the World AIDS Day and ZITF themes.
The objectives of the CWGH exhibition were:
To disseminate information on Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH), HIV and AIDS to young people and communities in general
To identify gaps and opportunities for SRH programming
To network and build alliances with relevant partners and stakeholders to enhance planning, implementation, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of programs addressing youth SRH needs.
To facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge amongst young people, youth serving organizations and other relevant partners in the national response to HIV and AIDS for young people.
Exhibitions such as the ZITF provide opportunities to reach out to the target population with basic information on HIV and AIDS in order to promote safer sexual behaviors and to reduce stigma. IEC material in the form of pamphlets, posters, T-Shirts, pens and rulers were also distributed. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our partnersMost of the IEC material was sourced from partners SHILOAH Zimbabwe, SAYWHAT, IOM, Plumtree AIDS Project and SAT for the IEC materials used during the exhibition.
CWGH is partnering with the People’s Health Movement in the Right to Health Campaign; it is also a member of the Regional Network in Equity in Health in East and southern Africa (EQUINET), co-ordinated by TARSC, and the Health Civil Society in East and Southern Africa. We have also done work with HAI-Africa on Access to Essential Medicines and SEATIN on health and trade.
Access to Essential Medicines
30 years after the introduction of the essential medicines concept throughout Africa there are simply not enough medicines on the pharmacy shelves. At any time, public health facilities in Africa have in stock only about half of a core set of essential medicines, those listed on the Essential Drugs List. Stock-outs are worst in rural areas and harm the poor. The Africa-wide campaign, Stop the Stock-outs: Access to Essential Medicines for All launched in February 2009 aims to reduce stock outs of medicines in public health facilities which inadvertently results in improved access to essential medicines in Africa. This regional campaign is being run in six African countries which are Malawi, Kenya.
In Zimbabwe, the campaign is being headed by the CWGH. Our Health Programme Officer has attended two crucial regional meetings, the African Civil Society Workshop on Access to Essential medicines which ran from the 4th to 6th of May 2009 in Afddis Ababa, Ethiopia and the African Civi Society Role and Response workshop (7-10 December 2009) in Lusaka, Zambia. The Addis Ababa workshop which followed the launch of the Africa-wide campaign, Stop the Stock-outs: Access to Essential Medicines for All, convened 30 civil society organizations and policy-makers to examine strategies for reducing stock-outs of medicines in public health facilities, and improving access to essential medicines in Africa.
The aim of the workshop was to develop a coordinated national, regional and continental advocacy action plan focused on improving access to medicines across the continent. A joint statement was developed, and representatives from Kenya and Madagascar were nominated to present the positions to the experts meeting, The Fourth Conference of African Ministers of Health Meeting (CAMH4) whose theme was “Universal Access to Essential Health Services: Improving Maternal and Child Rights”, which was running concurrently with the workshop. Civil Society Organisations that were on the programme were mobilized so that they could raise the issues being discussed at that the meeting. The workshop participants also had the opportunity to attend the experts meeting as observers to oversee the adoption of the positions.
The Lusaka meeting sought to share the different strategies for success used by the partners, country plans, challenges, opportunities for improvement and recommendations for advocacy. Zimbabwe shared its goals of minimizing diversion of essential medicines to the black market. Work around this has already begun with baseline surveys having been carried out in 5 urban and rural districts in Zimbabwe. Plans are underway to develop a mechanism of communicating with Rural District Health Centres. The Stop the Stock Outs Campaign continues to present opportunities for CWGH to engage with key stakeholders and to network at regional level. It also presents a vehicle for CWGH to implement the resolution reached at the National Health Conference 2008, with regards to access to essential medicines.
The Community and Home-based Care program for mothers and newborns being implemented in UMP and Chikomba Districts, has the capacity to increase community participation which is an effective tool for behaviour change around health care-seeking behaviour. The program is directly targeted at pregnant women and mothers as well as the family unit and community as a whole. Communities will be provided with information to be better prepared on issues to do with maternal and neonatal health. Village Health Workers, the cadre identified by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare as appropriate, will be trained in community management of the mother and newborn including early detection of pregnancy complications and referral to a health facility. They serve as the connector-outreach workers between the health service providers and the communities to promote health among groups of people who traditionally lacked access to adequate care. Under this programme, we seek to:
Promote good health seeking behaviour for pregnant women so as to reduce chances of neonatal and maternal mortality
Create platforms for community dialogue on maternal and child health.
Strengthen community capacity to develop and implement locally driven action plans in response to maternal and neonatal mortality
Promote community level campaigns on maternal and neonatal health, particularly supporting positive behaviour change amongst the youth, men and women
Enhance communities’ appreciation of maternal health as a gender issue
Our primary aim is to reach at least 85% of women, men and young people in these two districts with information on care of mothers and newborns. Trained VHWs would provide post natal care within 3 days to 90% of mothers and newborns including referral for clinical management of complications. We are complementing government efforts to scale up and ensure success in the improvement of maternal and neonatal health in Zimbabwe. Approximately 50,000 women of child bearing age and their families including men and young people will be reached. We fully acknowledge the financial support being provided by UNICEF, without which the programme would not be possible.
Recent activities
Stakeholder Sensitization Meetings in the two districts (Chikomba & Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe (UMP) have been held with members from the local authority, traditional leaders and Civil Society Organisations to update them on the key components of the programme and gain commitment to support the programme.
A training of trainers workshop was also held in Marondera during the week of 26-30 May 2010 were a total of 20 trainers from the two districts were trained. The training focussed on community management of the mother and the newborn, home based care of the premature infant and low weight babies, support for initiation of early feeding including exclusive breastfeeding where appropriate, management of neonatal illnesses and referral for mothers and newborns that are sick. It also looked at the role communities can play in reducing maternal and infant mortality. The trained trainers are now equipped to train the Village Health Workers (VHWs) in their districts.
Current Activities
The day to day training of VHWs has begun in the Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe (UMP) district. A total of 90 VHWs are being trained at three centres, namely Mutawatawa Hospital, Dindi School and ,with each centre having 30 participants.
The Health Literacy programme grew from the civic education on health programme which was rose out of the deterioration of key social indicators during the 1990s. Demand for information and participation from by civic groups in 1998 on a range of public health, health systems and organizational issues saw the birth of this programme. The Health Literacy Programme aims to consolidate the work done through the Civic Education programme, identifying and filling gaps, as well as introduce innovative processes and concepts into the work. It is a regional programme of work in East and Southern Africa being coordinated by TARSC Zimbabwe.
It operates in Zimbabwe (CWGH), Malawi (MHEN) and Botswana (BFTU) to support the development and use of participatory health education materials for health civil society. Health facilities are realizing the importance of health literacy and are starting to develop health literacy programmes to address the difficulties that patients have in obtaining and understanding health information, to equip civil societies in selected communities with the skills they need to assess quality of service delivery at their health institutions. For example, CWGH and TARSC have partnered with the Zimbabwe Association of Church related Hospitals (ZACH) to build health literacy in health centre committees in clinics in two ZACH districts. The programme has the capacity to increase level of knowledge of communities around health facilities on quality health services responsive to their needs. The work also facilitates and supports the establishment of mechanisms of community participation, such as Health Centre Committees (HCCs), district chapters and Health Advisory Boards (HBAs). TARSC with CWGH trained a total of 60 CWGH facilitators from the Northern and Southern Region of Zimbabwe that are implementing Health literacy community programmes in 20 CWGH districts in Zimbabwe.
The CWGH Zimbabwe has begun work around resuscitating community health committees in districts through reviving the Health Centre Committees and linking them with the Health Literacy facilitators in the districts under the programme, Strengthening Health Centre Committees : Enhancing Community Participation in Health. Health Centre Committees (HCC) are vehicles through which communities can participate in primary health care (PHC) and district health systems (DHS). The work being done under the health Literacy programme facilitates and supports the establishment of mechanisms of community participationHealth literacy campaigns have been held at both the district and national level while more the community Health Literacy training has reached more than 3500 people and has capacity to multiply in the new political dispensation. CWGH has campaigned for Health literacy as a means to attaining some of the Millenium Development Goals and in driving the primary health care, and organizing people’s power for health at the CWGH 15th annual conference held in October 2008.