Integrated Health Care Program & Water and Sanitation in Somalia

Somalia

The project focused on health and nutrition as well as health promotion interventions to increase access to basic health access services and health awareness to the target communities, mainly in the hard-to-reach, nomadic and Internally Displaced Persons. The second key focus of project was to increase community access to safe water as well as promoting behaviour change through hygiene promotion and improved sanitation as well as capacity building interventions. The project supported intervention in several communities in the 3 Puntland branches with several health/nutrition and WASH activities. A total of 85,886 community members (49,528 female and 36,358 male) were treated of common ailments by the mobile health clinics. Over the same period, a cumulative total of an estimated 380,000 community members (228,000 female and 152,000 male) were reached with health promotion interventions, including hygiene and sanitation promotion carried out mainly by trained community volunteers as well as interventions such as chlorination of water sources, rehabilitation of boreholes and provision of fuel subsidies to run boreholes. The project has the following 4 main outcomes: Outcome 1: Improved access to basic healthcare services in the target communities in Puntland through the network of 4 SRCS MCH/OPD mobile health clinics. The Expanded Programme of Immunization targeting children under 5 years of age aims at providing protection to the target against childhood preventable primary diseases. Over the 3- year period of this project, 1,947 children under one year of age completed 3 dozes of the Pentavalent vaccination through the mobile clinic services (6 in year 2, 4 in year 2 and 2 in year 3). Similarly, a cumulative total of 6,502 children were vaccinated against measles while 1,843 Women of Childbearing Age (1,009 pregnant and 834 non-pregnant) received at least 2 dozes of the Tetanus vaccine. During the reporting period, a total of 85,886 community members were treated for diverse common illnesses. The number was made up of almost 58% female (49,529) and 42% male (36,358). About 28% (24,129) of the total number treated were children under the age of 5 years. The most common causes of morbidity recorded by the mobile teams were skin infection, acute respiratory infection (ARI), diarrhoea, eye infection and pneumonia for children. Outcome 2: Improve the capacity of the mobile health clinics to deliver quality health care to populations in the target communities through continuous training and supply of basic medical equipment and drugs. The mobile technical teams, made up of nurses, midwives and auxiliary nurses numbering 18 were provided various trainings in that regard. The 6 nurses and 6 midwives were provided case anagement/treatment guidelines training and updated with current tools and guidelines to facilitate their work. The 6 auxiliary nurses were similarly trained to scale up the Expanded Programme of Immunization component of service delivery with the support of the Ministry of Health/UNICEF. Outcome 3: Improve the capacity of SRCS staff, volunteers and community own resource persons to provide community-based health services to the target communities in Puntland through training and coaching. Thirty (30) community volunteers and staff were trained in Epidemiology Control for Volunteers as well as Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting. Outcome 4: Enhanced knowledge and practice of safe hygiene and sanitation at the household level. Sixty (60) community volunteers (majority female) were trained in basic surveillance, social mobilization and basic case management through the use of the Oral Rehydration Points. Overall, an estimated 380,000 community members were reached with direct and indirect WASH interventions. About 87,976 persons (52,908 female and 35,068 male) were direct beneficiaries of the chlorination exercises that were carried out by community volunteers.