The Impact of Solar Power in Moomba

When Elvis first started working at Moomba, he faced a great number of challenges. In particular, the lack of electricity caused daily hardship. “It was very difficult,” Elvis described. “You felt like you were incompetent, even when you knew what you needed to do, because you couldn’t do it.” Without power, managing childbirths at the facility at night was especially challenging. The facility staff tried using the flashlight on their phones, but it didn’t work well. Without visibility, recalled Elvis, “you couldn’t do anything, even for a simple case.” Specifically, without power, Elvis found it very difficult to properly perform sutures. “If you were the night staff on duty, you would know, I’ll be in trouble.” They started referring night-time deliveries to other facilities, but unfortunately the nearest facility is 24 kilometers away. For many families, the transportation costs alone to this other facility were extremely, and in some cases prohibitively, expensive.

The Moomba facility was meant to be delivering 18 babies every month, but due to the lack of power and the need to refer women to other centers, they were only managing about 5 deliveries per month. These limitations were discouraging for Elvis and his colleagues, the front line health care workers responsible for the health of their neighbors in Moomba.

Then, in 2022, conditions changed. On Call Africa, a Zambian non-profit dedicated to improving rural health outcomes, identified Moomba as an ideal facility to receive a solar panel. The panel installation began in May of 2022. But OCA didn’t stop with the installation alone: they also set up a sustainability plan, so that the Moomba community would be well equipped to maintain and manage the solar panel over time. To that end, OCA helped Moomba form and train a committee to maintain the panel and ensure its functionality in perpetuity. The community handover for the solar panel occurred in December of 2022.

With the solar panel, the facility now has power every day, 24 hours per day. On top of that, there haven’t been any issues so far when it comes to upkeep. This has been a game-changer for the facility. As Elvis describes: “You are able to manage at night like you are working during the day – there’s power!” Now, they are typically delivering 13 babies each month – a more than 200% increase in two years. The power is also serving the facility’s Mother’s Shelter – a space where expecting mothers at 28 weeks who live far from the facility are able to arrive and live to ensure they are able to get to the facility in time for the birth. In a place like Moomba, where households still don’t have electricity, the ability to access power at the Mother’s Shelters is a major draw for expecting mothers.

Nonetheless, Elvis noted that the Moomba facility is still using paper records for their patients. The paper files and booklets are easy to misplace, and it is difficult to reliably track important information—like child vaccination status—with incomplete data. The Zambian Ministry of Health did not previously consider Moomba facility to be eligible to receive Smart Care, a new digital tool for patient record-keeping, because without power the facility wouldn’t be able to reliably use government-issued computers for data entry. But now, Elvis is hopeful that they can soon be selected to transition to Smart Care, and keep improving service delivery to their patients.

“The community has benefitted a lot from this power,” said Elvis. “As a facility we are very appreciative because we are now able to do our work.”
In the next year, On Call Africa plans to keep installing solar panels in Zambia, to help more facilities safely manage childbirth and serve their communities to the best of their ability.

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