Programs

Regular Primary Mobile Clinical Outreaches
Funded and supported by Cosmos Alliance, Medical Mission Aid, Jabar Foundation in Australia and multiple individuals

The outreach program offers mobile health services that provide clinical care and health education to poor rural communities. It seeks to address the problem of poor access to quality healthcare, isolation, high transport, and medical costs. The socio-economic situation in Zimbabwe continues to depreciate thereby affecting basic human rights such as healthcare. Our outreach programme therefore supplements and supports the limited and stretched existing Ministry of health and child Welfare initiatives by addressing some of the above-mentioned challenges and problems faced mainly by the poor rural and peri-urban communities. Our goal is ultimately to improve wellbeing and save lives.

Sizolwethu Mobile Health Sizolwethu Mobile Health Sizolwethu Mobile Health Sizolwethu Mobile Health

In this project we seek to address the Primary medical treatment of both acute and chronic ailments as well as compliment that with health and hygiene education and promotion. The target area in which we are working in has only two main government public hospitals, which in themselves are dilapidated and have minimum resources to cater for the masses.

Our target is also of people in the squatter camps who most are immigrants and do not have any identification documents which therefore makes it difficult for them to access any form of healthcare within the system. The economic situation continues to affect service delivery as health workers are continuously striking and or seeking employment in the private sector or migrating to other countries. This results in brain drain and thus ultimately affecting the people in desperate need of healthcare services.

Currently the government offers free immunisation, HIV/AIDS testing, TB screening etc. Our role is to offer Primary Healthcare through the treatment of acute and chronic ailments. An average of 550+ patients are seen per month. In order to strengthen service provision, we are working on developing a project that will seek to empower Community Health Workers (CHW).

Problems / Issues to be Addressed.

1. Lack of access to health facilities
Remoteness and high transport costs Most rural communities do not have nearby health facilities. They have to walk long distances to travel to the nearest clinic or hospital.

2. High elderly population
The majority of the communities we visit are highly populated with the elderly who are left with the responsibility of looking after grandchildren as their parents would have either passed away due to HIV/AIDS or have migrated to neighbouring countries such as South Africa in search of greener pastures. These elderly patients normally present with life threatening chronic ailments such as diabetes and hypertension. These patients therefore are in need of a constant supply of chronic medication or risk complications.

Goal

To improve health and wellbeing of isolated and poor selected communities

Objectives (medium term)

1. Increase in knowledge and retention
- Overtime the objective is increased knowledge as well as behavioural change.

2. Decrease in acute and chronic diseases
- Regular visits ensure proper adherence and management for chronic patients
- Reduction in reinfection of acute illnesses

Objectives (short term)

1. Increase access to quality clinical care
- This is achieved by conducting free mobile outreach clinics to poor rural and squatter camp communities who have little or no access to healthcare facilities. These outreach clinics are set up in existing structures such as community halls/building etc. If buildings are not available the team uses strong solid tents and set up consultation rooms, dispensary etc.

Story of Change/Success

Employee Maria Maliki
1. I used to work as a nurse at one of the main private hospitals in Bulawayo, mostly with children. My passion for serving children and being of use to people in need of extra care started when I was young. My professional life has helped me build good relationships with individuals and institutions in Bulawayo’s health sector. I believe that this passion, training and experience was a way by which God panel-beat me for the work at Sizolwethu. The most significant change that

I have witnessed by working at Sizolwethu is being part of a good team that provides medical assistance to poor and disadvantaged communities that would otherwise not have access to such support. Together, and with the support of nurses and medical doctors from Zimbabwe and Australia, we have helped resource-poor patients that have been living with problems that they felt would not be solved and others that were facing death.

2. Direct beneficiary NOJ
I used to live in Killarney squatter camp on the outskirts of Bulawayo but now I live in Mazwi. I am a single mother with six children. My main problem is that all my children developed extreme Sizolwethu Clinical Outreach Proposal 2022-2025 10 rickets, which make it impossible for them to walk unaided. I am very thankful to Sizolwethu for assisting two of my children. One of them received a wheelchair and psychotherapy treatment. He is 15 years now and if it were not for that assistance, I would be carrying him on my back to get him from one point to another. Now he is mobile and can perform some of the household chores. The second and younger child is a girl whose rickets were corrected through an operation. Now she can go to school and other children have stopped laughing at her because of the ‘shape of her legs’. She can play with other children, which has improved her social skills. She talks more confidently. The assistance given to my children has helped me because I bear the burden of their physical disabilities. Sizolwethu should continue to have the resources and heart to help other less fortunate people in the same way they have helped me.

3. Village Head
I am a village head in New Mazwi where there are nearly 200 households who were resettled from a squatter camp in Killarney, on the other side of Bulawayo. My community has been getting different forms of health and medical assistance from Sizolwethu. This includes mobile clinic and ambulance services, health education, spiritual healing and support for the elderly. Sizolwethu’s most special contribution in my community is caring for the old and disabled: people that we often forget about when seeking medical help. Some of the disabled have been operated on while the elderly have received wheel chairs, which have made them capable of doing many things for themselves. I think Sizolwethu has done so well compared to other organisations because it consults community leaders, attend community events and listen carefully to what community members say.