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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter

AS Government forges ahead with efforts to promote universal health coverage, plans are underway to establish healthcare facilities at village level countrywide, a development that will see community health workers and traditional healers being capacitated to attend to some health conditions.

This will make Zimbabwe a model of primary healthcare in the region as the Second Republic continues to implement policies that uplift livelihoods.

Public health and Well-being is one of the key focus areas in the National Development Strategy 1.
Speaking at the 2nd African Regional Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Conference that was held in Victoria Falls last week, Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Dr John Mangwiro said Covid-19 exposed the need to capacitate grassroots health systems to enhance primary healthcare.

Minister Dr John Mangwiro

“We are opening village health care centres. Our village healthcare workers are being capacitated to attend to all conditions including Covid-19,” said Dr Mangwiro.

Village health care workers complement services offered at clinics and hospitals as they distribute prescribed tablets, identify health challenges in communities and attend to socio-economic issues affecting people especially girls and women.
Dr Mangwiro said traditional healers will also be capacitated.

He did not give timelines but said this is part of ongoing interventions by Government in the health sector.
“We are also in the process of giving traditional healers BP medicines and thermometers as we have seen that patients with some diseases will be holed up at traditional healers’ places because they don’t know where else to go or have no means,” he said.

Dr Mangwiro said this is a model that can be replicated in the region.
Participants at the conference which was attended by medical and community health experts, academics and Government officials commended Government for the initiative.

The conference was aimed at deliberating on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and the need to scale up efforts in research, prevention, surveillance and management at a time when the NCDs have become leading causes of mortality in the world.
World NCD Federation regional chairperson Professor Davision Munodawafa said capacitating workers at grassroots was highly commendable.

Professor Davision Munodawafa

“We are looking at a situation whereby a village health worker programme is being revived which is a good policy decision. As WNCD Federation we support primary health care and the village is the smallest unity of primary healthcare, and we hope that if Zimbabwe is successful, other countries could emulate this model,” he said.

World Health Organisation representative for Universal Health Coverage Dr Anderson Chimusoro commended Government for making health services accessible to the poor.

“This is a very noble intervention and from the WHO perspective this is promoting universal health coverage. That means people who need services should be able to access health services without financial bottlenecks and one of the issues is actually to have health facilities as close as possible to where people live. The workers should then be provided with the necessary facilities like medicines at affordable prices, ” said Dr Chimusoro.

He said health is everyone’s problem and the use of community health workers is known to contribute in achieving universal health.
Dr Chimusoro said capacitating those who have interest to deliver such services should be commended. – @ncubeleon.