Women and Children First has been working in Tanzania training local health officials to organise and run community health groups. The groups, starting this summer, will support pregnant women to address critical maternal health problems such as malnutrition and anaemia.
Shockingly, 12,220 women will die each year during pregnancy, childbirth or after birth, often from preventable and treatable diseases or conditions.
In Micheweni District, Pemba Island, Zanzibar – part of Tanzania – considerable challenges exist for women and children.
These include a strong distrust of health services, often caused by generational barriers. Someone who received poor quality service over 20 years ago can still affect current perception of the healthcare, affecting attendance now.
Pregnant women also face issues around malnutrition and anaemia. Traditionally families have to sell the best quality meat and fish for the income they need to survive, living off scraps and poor-quality produce, which is of little nutritional value. Women and children just do not get the balanced diet they need including enough greens, fruit and vegetables.
By improving knowledge, changing attitudes and ensuring livelihoods pregnant women and their babies will be more likely to survive and thrive.
Mikey Rosato, Chief Executive, and Annemijn Sondaal, Programmes Manager, trained staff from the Zanzibar Health Promotion Unit to organise community health groups. The staff will in turn train supervisors and Community Health Volunteers to run the groups.
Mikey and Annemijn used Women and Children First’s training materials, a comprehensive package of presentations and exercises that build capacity in facilitating, supervising and managing groups.
Two of the health officials run through one of the training exercises
Supporting the efforts was Florida Malamba, an experienced former group leader from Malawi, who is using her experience to provide guidance, advice and training. She will support Women and Children First with further training of groups across Africa in future.
The training was well received by the participants. Fathu, a District Public Health Nursing Officer who will support training the supervisors says, “The potential of the groups is very important. The communities will learn how to solve their own problems. People in the community get a chance to identify these problems themselves and solve them.
“I learned a lot from the training. The exercises are very important, because in them you gain experience. I look forward to practising more.”
Florida Malamba facilitates one of the training sessions
Suleiman, a future manager of the groups, adds, “The training equipped me with the skills as a manager. Before the training my capacity and skills in PLA-MNH was low, but now it is high. The exercises were very effective, and the presentations are important. It is not hard to learn from the trainers. I feel comfortable training others.”
Annemijn adds, “The people here are really excited about this community-led approach. Before they have been trained in teaching and raising health awareness. The power of the health groups is beyond giving information, it’s about providing communities with the tools they need to solve their own problems.”
The officials being trained practice their learning through further exercises
After the positive response, the materials, manuals and exercises are being translated into Swahili, for use by health group leaders.
In the spring Women and Children First will help the trainees cascade capacity down to the 12 supervisors and 75 Community Health Volunteers who will run the groups on the ground in Micheweni District.
The volunteers will then become leaders of 150 new health groups, reaching up to 75,000 women, men and children.
There is an aim of encouraging at least 30% of pregnant women to attend the groups by the end of 2023. If the groups are successful, there is commitment from the Ministry of Health and UNICEF to introduce further groups across the islands of Zanzibar and later into mainland Tanzania.