Last year we successfully raised over £50,000 through our BBC Radio 4 Appeal. Thanks to the incredible Louise Minchin for supporting us with this and for reaching so many with our message.
Our focus for the appeal was on maternal health and with Louise’s help, we shared Esther’s* story, a mother who had her baby at Kanyanga Rural Health Post.
Esther walked 21 miles in her final months of pregnancy to give birth at Kanyanga Rural Health Post, to be attended to by a nurse who delivered her baby girl in the middle of the night by the light of a mobile phone torch. Esther slept on an empty sack on a mud floor in a thatched, open shelter with no running water or power.
Esther is just one of many new mothers who did not receive the quality of care they deserved. Since the arrival of Esther’s baby girl, On Call Africa have been able to work with the Kanyanga community, facility staff and District Health Office to improve the facilities at the clinic. There is now solar power, running water, toilets and showers as well as a proper mothers waiting shelter with beds and a fully functioning maternity annex for all deliveries. Since the improvements were made, we have seen an increase a 32% increase in the number of women choosing to give birth at the facility, rather than staying at home. This is a key government target in Zambia, to help reduce complications and maternal and neo-natal mortalities.
As part of our facility based quality improvement plan, we have been able to work in other communities as well as Kanyanga, to ensure rural communities are getting better access to and quality of care at their facilities.
Thanks to the funds raised from our BBC Appeal and our matched funding, we have been able to expand our work to Simonga Rural Health Post (RHP). Simonga RHP faced similar challenges to Kanyanga, with a lack of facilities and the nurses doing their utmost for the community with very limited resources. With a catchment of 6000 people and a high rate of births, many women were being referred to Livingstone Level 1 hospital due to the lack of facilities at the clinic, but this could take days to get them to the hospital owing to lack of available transport.
We are proud to have been able to completely renovate the maternity annex, increasing its size and functionality, by constructing a pre and post natal ward, sluice room for proper cleaning and sterilising, a delivery ward and dedicated toilets and showers. All our work has been done in collaboration with the facility, community and the District Health Office.
The work on the maternity annex is part of our wider work at this facility where we have also been able to bring the facility up to national standards for a health facility by improving and renovating the outpatient facility, building inclusive toilets and showers, accessible walk ways, installing safe and clean water at all points of care, as well as training Community Based Volunteers (CBVs) in the new national standards for CBVs.
We are looking forward to handing over the facility to the District in July this year and seeing the impact our work in Simonga is having on the community.
*Not her real name
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