Mozambique: Mozambique Mobile Clinic Project

Success Story: Mobile Clinic as an On-the-job Training Platform

December 07, 2015

Mozambique Initiative Reports

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The Mobile Clinic is an initiative funded by Real Medicine Foundation and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), implemented by Friends in Global Health. One objective of FGH interventions, to which the Mobile Clinic plays an important role, is to provide clinical support and technical assistance to peripheral health facilities.

Manuela Alfino conducting an MCH consultation

Mbawa's health facility is one health facility that receives FGH technical assistance through the Mobile Clinic. Through this support "things have been getting better. Myself, I also did not know. But when the Mobile Clinic's nurse that came to work with me explained how to do things; I was willingly learning, and she was also very keen on teaching. (…) From the Mobile Clinic I've learnt a lot in general, and (specifically about) counseling because we had no counselor at the time," explains the Maternal and Child Health Nurse Manuela Alfino at Mbawa's health unit.
Júlia Sandramo, a newly deployed pharmacist by the Ministry of Health of Mozambique to work at Mbawa's health center, explains that she was integrated to the service by a Mobile Clinic technician, employed by FGH. She says that

"during the integration phase to the health center, the Mobile Clinic technician was the one that assisted me. (…) He showed me how to update the book, to write reports, and how to register the collection of antiretroviral medication. His support was very positive, I was really in need of someone. If it would not be for the Mobile Clinic I would have had no one to integrate me because there are very few agents and health personnel around. So we need the Mobile Clinic to accelerate our work. (…) The Mobile Clinic has helped me a lot to get integrated. I am very pleased by the Mobile Clinic’s presence."

Julia Sandramo consulting the registration books

Atanásio Conhesse, Mbawa's health facility director, affirms that the Mobile Clinic

"has brought us improvement regarding technical aspects, new teachings to the clinician side, and has brought us success in relation to the increase in the number of consultations because we have a greater number of monthly consultations, which is a thing that did not happen before."

Atanásio Conhesse – Mbawa Health Center Director

Julia Sandrama – Pharmacist

Mobile Clinic at Mbawa's health facility

Manuela Alfino conducting an MCH consultation

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Background

RMF’s Mobile Clinic in Mozambique is a new model of healthcare provision for our organization, conceptualized to reach remote and rural communities with no prior access to health care. Since its inception in 2008, our Mobile Clinic has been hugely successful and remains the only mobile clinic in all of Mozambique. The clinic, a collaboration between RMF, Vanderbilt University’s Friends in Global Health, and Medical Mission International, is currently deployed in one of the most populous provinces of Mozambique, Zambézia Province, located in the central coastal region with a population of almost 4 million.

Objectives

To improve the quality of life and provide access to health services, particularly access to maternal-child healthcare and anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV and AIDS, Tuberculosis and other diseases.
To provide access to healthcare in remote areas of Zambézia Province, Mozambique.
To reinforce the expansion of HIV care and treatment services initiated by the Zambézia Provincial Health Directorate (DPS), by providing temporary reinforcement in terms of staff, training, and space for peripheral health units initiating implementation of ART until such time as the DPS can organize the infrastructure and resources necessary for these sites to function independently.