Antenatal Care Upgrade in the Kafue District, Zambia - Phase II
Project location: Zambia, Kafue District
Project start date: March 2016 -
Project end date: February 2017
Project number: 2016-009
Beneficiary: Voci di Popoli nel Mondo
The project is carried out in Kafue, a small town in Zambia, and its neighbourhood, a partially rural and partially suburban area, included in the Kafue District, located in the Lusaka Province not far from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and famous for its by the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado pictured in 2010 Kafue National Park.
In the area of Kafue and neighbourhood there are two main hospitals: the Kafue District Hospital (KDH) and the Chirundu Missionary Hospital and 3 health centres. The presence of Ngo VPM in the area, dating back to 2012, thanks to the funding of the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation and of the European Commission, has allowed to build strong bonds with the Kafue District Hospital and its staff. Activities realized spanned from training courses to support to the local staff in their daily routine. Particularly important, and much appreciated locally, has been the prolonged presence of an Italian surgeon in the KDH that benefited the population with a service practically inexistent in the area that spared many patients the transfer to more equipped hospitals.
Conceived together by the local hospital staff and the locally active Italian doctors, the present project focuses its efforts on the crucial sector of the antenatal care. Its main aims are three:
1. Strengthen the antenatal health care service provision to mothers and children. Stress will be laid on the early diagnosis of complications in pregnancy in order to timely send the lying-inpatients to more equipped hospitals;
2. Support the local hospital staff;
3. Basically restore and equip 3 health care centres.
The key role in the project will be played by Italian hospital doctors that will be locally sent both to hold training courses, in order to reach aim 1 and to support the local hospital staff (aim 2), and to supervise the restoration and equipment works (aim 3). The project not only agrees with the UNDP Sustainable Development Goals, particularly with Goal 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all and Goal 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, but also with the Zambian Public Health System National Program.
