Category: Newspaper Publications

Posted on

Government must intensify measles awareness and vaccination campaigns

Government must intensify measles awareness and vaccination campaigns

 Credit :Healthtimes

The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has urged the government to intensify measles vaccination and awareness campaigns to prevent further deaths as the highly contagious disease continues to claim lives  countrywide.

By Staff Reporter

In a statement, CWGH Executive Director, Mr Itai Rusike said, “…the worrying statistics from the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) indicate that since the measles outbreak in Mutasa district in Manicaland province last month about 700 people, mainly from the religious sects that do not believe in vaccination, have succumbed to the disease.

“More depressing is the fact that the disease, which is preventable by vaccination, has since spread to other parts of the country, killing more people mainly children. With the opening of schools this week, there are fears that the highly contagious disease could rapidly spread across the country, claiming more lives as children from different areas and beliefs mix and mingle in education institutions.”

Government should therefore urgently strengthen its surveillance, control and management procedures to avoid an explosion of the disease in schools.

This also calls on the government to roll-out serious awareness and vaccination campaigns countrywide, including engaging leaders of apostolic sects to ensure they get their children vaccinated to prevent these avoidable deaths.

It is only through reaching out to religious leaders, who command a lot of respect and influence among their congregants that the majority of their followers can agree to get their children vaccinated against measles and other killer diseases.

Informative messages and materials should be printed and distributed where community 
members who are at risk are likely to have access to them.

It is important to note that partnership among the public health sector, civil society and media is critical for successful implementation of public health activities. For that reason, we urge the government to roll-out serious awareness campaigns against measles on television, radio, newspapers, social media platforms and carrying out road shows in the affected areas to ensure that the message reaches out to all citizens to prevent further deaths. One death is too many.

Parents and guardians must also play a pivotal role in the fight against measles. It is inexcusable that, in this time and age, children continue to die from measles and other diseases that are preventable or that should have been eradicated decades ago.

Posted on

Community health workers: Essential for health, under-valued by planners

Community health workers (CHWs) were key to Zimbabwe`s successful expansion of primary health care (PHC) in the early 1980`s. CHWs played a central role in closing the gap between public health services and communities at local levels, bringing health services outreach to communities, and facilitating community roles in the health delivery system. For example, CHWs and Community Based Distributors were instrumental in implementing the successful Zimbabwe Family Planning Programme, as they helped raise awareness on family planning methods such as condoms and combined oral contraceptives (commonly known as “The Pill”), as well as the advantages of child spacing. These efforts are reflected in the expansion of coverage of contraception and reported decrease in fertility rates in the country from 6.5 children per woman in the early 1980`s to 4.3 children per woman in 2001.

CHWs continue up to today to augment the work being done by the mainstream health sector, raising awareness, giving health advice, monitoring growth of children under five years, mobilizing communities during out-reach programmes and for immunization including as trusted sources of information for community literacy on Covid-19.

 


Community health workers reflect on their work

Mrs. Kaseke a CHW in Mwanza Ward (Goromonzi District in Zimbabwe) echoes these sentiments. One of her roles as a CHW is to mobilize food for chronically ill and home based patients in her area. She also runs community based growth monitoring clinics on Saturdays. “I have a scale that was allocated to me by the clinic when I started as a CHW. Women from my area bring their babies at my homestead. I weigh the babies and record their weight on cards, as it is done at the clinic. I then use the weight records to check if the child is growing well; otherwise I refer the child to the clinic for further assessment”.

CHWs see an important role for themselves in bridging the gap between the community and the health services, as explained by another Village Health Worker from Mangwe District in Zimbabwe, Mrs. Portia Moyo:

‘We are the link between the community and the health department. We advise and refer the community to seek medical attention early, care for the home based ridden patients, chronic and TB patients on DOTS’.

CHWs and Community Based Distributors were instrumental in implementing the successful Zimbabwe Family Planning Programme, as they helped raise awareness on family planning methods such as condoms and combined oral contraceptives (commonly known as “The Pill”), as well as the advantages of child spacing.

Low morale or lack of support?

Despite these vital functions, the numbers of CHWs and the role played by CHWs has diminished over the past two decades in Zimbabwe. Whilst communities cite low morale due to lack of incentives as the major setback, the CHWs and other health staff point to lack of incentives and supporting resources and protective equipment as a major barrier to their performance.

In their early years, Community Health Workers benefited from incentives from the National Health Budget such as uniforms, bicycles and allowances, which were meant to enhance their work and motivate them. Bicycles were both a token of appreciation, and a tool to enable these volunteers to take their services to a wider population. The allowances they received helped them to buy basic necessities such as soap, so that they could look presentable whilst they carried out their duties. These incentives are now a thing of the past as there is no provision in our current national health budget to support CHWs hence the overreliance on external donors. There is urgent need to invest in Community Health Workers, increasing domestic health financing and move away from the current heavy reliance on external donors as it is not sustainable and poses a security threat in the event that donors decide to pull out for whatever reason.

Highlighting the plight of Community Health Workers, Mrs. Moyo said:

‘We as Community Health Workers’ are surprised about how we are handled…the problem is, out of all these duties our allowances are still as low as US$15 per month of which it is received after 3 to 6 months… We Community Health Workers are very much exposed to the world of infection, because we do not have protective clothing to put on when attending to home-based patients, of which most of them may have open wounds…We have tried in vain to request these protective clothing from our district hospital but the response is disheartening.’

There is urgent need to invest in Community Health Workers, increasing domestic health financing and move away from the current heavy reliance on external donors as it is not sustainable and poses a security threat in the event that donors decide to pull out for whatever reason.

Whilst communities cite low morale due to lack of incentives as the major setback, the CHWs and other health staff point to lack of incentives and supporting resources and protective equipment as a major barrier to their performance.

We as civil society demand more support for CHWs

Revitalizing CHW roles have been proposed as one measure to deal with the gap in health worker numbers in the face of the brain drain of health workers from rural to urban areas and from developing to developed nations. CHWs do not replace the requirement for adequate trained staff at primary and district levels of health systems, but they are a key cadre in the health system-fully aware of the health needs and aspirations of their communities. This makes them an invaluable asset in advancing community-orientated health delivery, and they should be supported.

The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has thus urged government to work with other stakeholders to create a plan to fully fund the CHW programme and support their work and to ensure that adequate resources are allocated in the budget for CHWs are accessible and reach these community level cadres for their work. However, this is not just a matter for government.

As civil society we see that the presence of VHWs in our communities is essential in our quest for equity in health and accessibility of health services, so that we too will be part of this support, including documenting the roles and impacts of CHWs our community to engage government and other stakeholders to value and resource these roles in the spirit of health for all.

The CWGH has thus urged government to work with other stakeholders to create a plan to fully fund the CHW programme and support their work and to ensure that adequate resources are allocated in the budget for CHWs are accessible and reach these community level cadres for their work.

The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) is a network of membership based civic organizations focusing on advocacy, action and networking around health issues in Zimbabwe. www.cwgh.co.zw

Itai Rusike

Itai Rusike is a Public Health Activist with more than 20 years’ experience organizing involvement of communities in health actions in Zimbabwe. He is also an active member of several regional and international organisations including national statutory bodies. Twitter @itairusike Email
Posted on

Zimbabwe Says It’s Prepared for Omicron Variant

Credits: Voice of America

by Columbus Mavhunga

HARARE — Zimbabwe’s government says the country is very prepared to handle the new COVID-19 variant – omicron – first reported in neighboring South Africa. The World Health Organization says a fourth wave of the pandemic is most likely to hit Africa.

Zimbabwe’s Vice President Constantino Chiwenga – who doubles as the country’s health minister – has asked the nation not to be concerned about omicron.

“The country should not panic because we are very prepared. The ramping up of our vaccination program in the past month has seen marked increase in the vaccination uptake. That is the prevention which we are going to have for our people if any other variant comes. At least when your body is protected it is much better than when you are found naked,” said the vice president.

Zimbabwe has fully inoculated about 2.8 million people since February, when it began its vaccination program to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The government has a target of vaccinating at least 10 million Zimbabweans — or 60% of the population — by the end of the year, a figure which might be difficult to reach given the scarcity of resources and short time left.

Itai Rusike, head of the nonprofit Community Working Group on Health, said Zimbabweans should panic about the new variant – initially named B.1.1.529 – since the country shares porous borders with South Africa and Botswana.

“And this new variant is coming at a time when the festive season is upon us. A whole lot of Zimbabweans, they use undesignated entry points. That poses a serious health challenge as they would not be properly screened and monitored as they come back to the country. What we want to encourage the government of Zimbabwe, is for them to strengthen their surveillance and monitoring system especially the land borders and make sure that the screening and monitoring at the entry points is also strengthened,” said Rusike.

Meanwhile, Humphrey Karamagi, a medical officer at the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, said on the WHO Twitter account that a fourth wave of COVID-19 is likely to hit the continent.

“A fourth wave in Africa is almost a certainty, as long as we have these factors in play, which is new variants coming up and the fact that people can be reinfected. And also, if we are getting new population who may not have been exposed. We would then have subsequent waves. Vaccination helps a lot in terms of reducing the severity of the disease [and] also reducing the risk of infection. The vaccine is not a magic bullet. So the vaccine is to work together with the public health measures to reduce the potential and risks of subsequent waves,” said Karamagi.

The WHO says COVID-19 has infected about 6.1 million people in Africa and claimed 152,113 lives. The world health body also says more than 227 million vaccine doses have been administered in Africa.