Mobile health service visits rural communities.
Imagine trying to feed a small family on US$1.50 a day. Now imagine how much harder it would be if you had six or more children.
Community Health and Sustainable Environment (CHASE) Africa, a UK-registered charity, is working in rural Kenya and Uganda to help address the complex issue of population pressures and the related concerns of poverty, ill health and environmental degradation.
CHASE provides access to free, voluntary family planning and basic health care services using mobile clinics. These clinics offer contraception advice, vaccinations, prenatal care, HIV testing, cervical screening, and deworming. As part of the programme, trusted local ‘mobilisers’ are deployed to the area where these clinics will operate, to build an understanding of family planning and maximize attendance at the clinics.
Noble Foundation has been part of the initiative since 2016. So far, we have funded more than 20 day clinics in rural communities across Kenya. The clinic enables women to access to contraception, many for the first time. The family planning element of the projects we supported have achieved over 8,000 Couple year protection (CYP). Each CYP refers to a woman having 1 year protection from unintended pregnancy. The value is calculated based on the total volume of various contraceptive protection disturbed during the year.
In 2018 alone, over 9,000 patients received primary health care in our day clinics, 3,800 of those were children treated for worms. Intestinal worms is a leading cause of death among children, these infections can impede mental and physical development. While hundreds of other patients were screened for cancer and HIV, and immunisations.
With smaller families and longer periods between births, resources will not need to be stretched so far. Women with fewer children have more time available for productive work and income-generating activities.
Mobile clinics bring basic healthcare services to underserved villages in Kenya.
