Communities reap the benefits of the “One Project, One Team” approach

To revitalise basic health service provision, WHO is conducting mobile health clinics in the hard-to-reach areas of the Cyclone affected communities, harnessing the One Project, One Team approach. Chipinge and Chimanimani areas are characterised by treacherous rugged terrain that makes passability near impossible in the rainy season. The spatial distribution of the health centres themselves actually impedes access to health care for many of the communities. 

The ZIRP clinics are therefore bringing relief as the mobile clinic team is fully constituted with a doctor, nurses, environmental health specialist, laboratory technician and a pharmacist to dispense drugs. Speaking at a mobile clinic at Muzite Village, Dr Nyasha Musiya said villagers normally walk to Gwenzi clinic which is 20km away from their village. 

“As ZIRP, we are offering comprehensive healthcare services after noticing that people struggle to access health facilities because of the long distance they have to walk from their homesteads to the hospitals. The mobile clinic here tends to all age groups and then makes referrals where necessary,” Dr Musiya said.

When ZIRP brought UNFPA on board to strengthen sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) support, it was strategic to combine the mobile one-stop clinics for SGBV with the mobile health clinics. 

The complementarity of the two programs begins from the community referral system where village health workers and community cadres have been trained to identify and refer survivors to the mobile clinics. At the mobile clinic, any suspected cases seen by the medical team are immediately referred to the GBV clinic which will be set up in a discreet area to allow privacy. The GBV mobile one-stop clinic provides counselling and legal services, and if necessary the survivor can be shuttled to a safe house in Marange.

The combined efforts of these two agencies re-emphasise the ‘One project, One team’ approach under ZIRP benefiting a  total of 580 GBV survivors and 420,454 people who have accessed basic health services. 131 of the GBV survivors have been provided with transport to higher levels of care.