Here is your weekly update. On Friday we met with Dr Bandiki (Mount St Mary’s Hospital, Wedza). He has a proposal in to his PMD on training nurses in non- communicable disease management, which he thinks may scale to community health workers. He might need some funding to support the nurse travel for training.
We had a great touch base with the UZ registrars and faculty. They are very keen on a stipend. The precedent with public health worked well and now with no stipend, they get 100 applicants for 40 positions every year. The stipend they used back then approximates to $500 a month. I am wondering if we prioritize those working in rural hospitals as that’s where the attrition is greatest and where the costs are highest. I was also thinking of adding a $100 a month grant to the registrars for capacity building in community health workers? This might prove to be a way to explore innovation and scale things.
Clinic at Rasper Community started on Monday. 2 nurses and 2 community health workers ran a screening clinic. My licence has still not come through. The clinic saw around 80 people a day for 4 days. Approx. 10-15 % will need follow up for which we have organized for transport to Norton Hospital. One of the nurses works there and will help shepherd them to the doc. We will have a report from the clinic together, hopefully next week.
We also scouted our potential well sites- one on a planned community area, one at a school that is being built by the local counsellor (it is on private land). We are going with the community area one for now with a bush pump (hand pump). Cost will be around US$3000-4000.
The Canadian ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ambassador Christina Buchan visited on Monday and we managed to persuade her to come out to Rasper!
We also got a chance to drop some supplies off at Twala Animal Sanctuary.
We met Ben Cattermoul from DFID who is interested in creatively disrupting the status quo of how aid is distributed in Zim. He was intrigued by the Partnership Pentagram Plus idea and would like to bring some donors to Rasper. We’ll see if that bears fruit.
We have organized to meet the two 3rd year registrars. One in Mutare, the other one in Bulawayo. We also have meetings arranged with the leadership of the NUST program and the Provincial Medical directors of Matabeleland North and South, when we are in Bulawayo.
