Bushikori Christian Centre - Australian Support Committee -

Bushikori Health Centre

The health centre serves a population of 23, 000 people with numerous activities running in the communities. The following activities are taking place -

1. Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs)
Initially a personal endeavour in the community, most mothers inherited or were taught by their close friends to be TBAs. They are mothers who help pregnant women to deliver when they go into labour and are unable to find transport to hospital, manage the long distances to a health unit or meet hospital costs of delivery. The clinic through funding has been able to train 10 TBAs in the community and given them refresher courses for the last couple of years. It also continuously supplies the TBAs with medical supplies for their work. At the end of every month, the mothers then send in reports to the health units to show the statistics of what's going on.

2. Reproductive Health Trainers/Peer Educators
The health unit has been able to train 6 trainers it continuously uses to train the reproductive health peer educators from the community and schools. They also give refresher courses, and help supervise the program. The peer educators are then trained to teach young people who are adolescents on reproductive health in the villages and schools. Two peer educators were selected from selected villages and two from schools in the catchment area.

3. Immunization
The clinic has seven immunisation outreaches served by four immunizers. They go into seven selected areas to immunize children on selected days of the month with every station being given its own dates of the month. A mobilizer separately goes out two to three days prior of the immunisation and tells the community that they should not forget their specified day and remind them to bring children for immunization. These is mostly funded by the Ministry of Health through a program called Primary Health Care but usually the local district does not release the funds in time for the required purposes and sometimes completely fails to send in the funds.

4. Popular Opinion leaders
The members of the community through AFFORD program sponsored by USAID selected 20 popular opinion leaders who were trained to teach formal and non-formal gatherings/meetings in relation to family planning, HIV/AIDS, sanitation, child health and reproductive health. They send in their reports every month.

5. Homapack distributors/ Antimalaria service providers(AMSP)
The health centre trained at least two people from every village who turned out to be either Homapack distributors or AMSP. Homapack distributors were recognized and used by the Ministry of Health to distribute drugs to the community in the fight for malaria especially when any community member fell sick. Currently the two batches of trained community members have since stopped working because of enormous changes in the malaria treatments. They will therefore need new trainings to update them on malaria treatments before redistribution of drugs can start again.

6. Assurance scheme
The health centre identified the poverty of the community members, their persistent inability to pay all their medical bills and its incurring bad debts as a result subsidized costs of treatment at the health centre. The health centre started an assurance scheme to help the members of the community be able to open accounts in the health centre and save money for their family treatments. This program has worked so well and currently enjoys serving over 126 households from the community, over 50 households from BCC and over 200 children from Joshua Primary School. This scheme helps them save money and they are able to use it at the time when they fall sick. Every member of the scheme is able to get his/her money back whenever they need it so it does not work like insurance companies. But rather saves and keeps money for the community.

7. Ultrasound Scanner
In 2020 funds donated were used to purchase a new ultrasound scan, a thermal-sonar printer and a power stabilizer to protect it from the common power surges that could ruin it all. The device is mounted on a portable trolley so we don't need dedicated space as we can run the scans bed-side with great mobility. This equipment has improved the services offered particularly birthing mothers who often present late after a failed attempt to deliver at home. Issues include foetal distress or obstructed labour. Staff at the clinic are faced with the challenge of either attempting a delivery at a primary facility like ours or referring them to a nearby hospital. Until now their hands and a fetoscope have been the only diagnostics available. The Ultrasound scanner enables staff to make key life saving decisions in the interest of the mother and the unborn.

8. Pink Umbrella

In 2012 the Pink Umbrella Foundation (Australia) commenced supporting the Health Centre in the areas of :-

  • Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health
  • Purchase of Drugs
  • HIV/AIDs Clinic Activities &
  • Maternal Health

Click the image to view Pink Umbrellas latest 2020 report

PINK_UMBRELLA_REPORT_2020-TN.PNG

Adolescent Sexual Repro-ductive Health.
Purchase of Drugs
ART Clinic Activities &
Maternal Health

Baby weigh in

Baby checkup day at Clinic

Immunisations

Lab testing - taking blood samples

Female Ward

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