Maunga Health Centre
Access to quality and affordable health care facilities and services remains a challenge for many rural communities in Zambia. The nearest clinic in Maunga is 20KM (12.2 miles) away from the community, a distance which is often travelled by foot to access health care. Poor infrastructure, a lack of resources, a shortage of basic medical supplies, and a shortage of skilled healthcare workers remain a challenge at these medical facilities. This has an impact on the service provided to the community which is already facing several health challenges.
We built a health care facility in Maunga, fully equipped with a maternity ward, solar power, access to water, ablution facilities, and equipped medical supplies and resources to serve the community. This clinic is currently assisting 15 patients a day and providing special clinic days for family planning services, ART services, children under five clinic, and antenatal services.
About our Project
This clinic is assisting to provide critical healthcare services to over 50 households living in rural Maunga. This centre ensures that medical services are easily accessible to the community and reduces the long travel distance for the community
The clinic is currently understaffed. The ratio of nurses to a patient is 1:4 and currently, 1 nurse is assisting 15 patients a day. On days when additional programs are offered such as family planning (every Tuesday) and health care services for children under 5 (once a month) and ART appointments mean that the clinic is seeing more than 15 clients a day. The nurse is currently assigned to the clinic by the government, and they also pay her salary. For us to get more nurses and doctors assigned to the clinic, we would need to provide accommodation for them.
Our next focus for this project will be to build accommodation for the nurse and perform regular maintenance on the facilities.
Building accommodation will allow us to increase resourcing at the facility and have more doctors and nurses deployed to the clinic, assist more patients daily, reduce the waiting time for service and provide good health care services.
A fully resourced and staffed healthcare facility will ensure that the community receives critical care on an urgent basis, which will contribute to speedy medical diagnosis and treatments. This will go a long way towards saving lives and improving the quality of life in this community.
Impact measurement and tracking
- The number of people assisted at the clinic
- Resources that the clinic has been equipped with
- The number of nurses and doctors working at the clinic
- Improvements in the quality of health in the community
