WILD4LIFE
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Mission Statement
Wild4life’s aim is to change the way rural healthcare is delivered in Zimbabwe. Our model provides for an effective, working rural health system that significantly raises the bar in terms of the quality and quantity of health services available to rural communities who need them most.
About This Cause
Wild4life started in 2008 as an HIV program supporting a mobile clinic team from St. Patrick’s Hospital (70km from the rural area where Wild4life works) in Zimbabwe, primarily offering HIV voluntary counseling and testing and antiretroviral therapy (ART) services, at that time. Prior to Wild4life’s presence in the Hwange District, colonial-era primary health clinics scattered throughout the district were often dilapidated and lacked basics such as water and electricity. Primary health care nurses were not trained to treat HIV cases and antiretroviral drugs were unavailable. As a result, most people had little or no access to medical services, and in particular, to HIV services, although infection rates were as high as 43% in the groups Wild4life tested for HIV. After years of working in the field showed that a silo-ed approach to health (i.e., only addressing HIV/AIDS) had limited impact on the overall health of rural communities. Over the years, the program has evolved, through necessity, into a more comprehensive approach that now addresses all of the main health issues affecting rural communities, focusing on both on building working rural health systems, including physical infrastructure, and delivering critical health programs and outreach through that improved system. The program has bolstered the Ministry of Health’s ability to efficiently deliver a set of primary health programs that address the major health issues impacting rural communities, e.g., HIV, pediatric HIV, malaria, child pneumonia, sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health at our network of five clinics. In addition to ensuring that programs run efficiently, Wild4life constructs and renovates clinics, and waiting mothers’ shelters. The five current sites that Wild4life has supported have been used to pilot best practices for rural healthcare delivery and, ultimately, have established a new norm for the standard of care in the catchment areas in terms of the quality and number of services offered. The current project, at the request of the Ministry of Health, is to expand the clinic network to all of the remaining rural clinics in the Hwange District, for a total of 17 health facilities. The expansion project will ensure that the same standard of care we have established at the pilot clinics is additionally met at all 17 clinics in the Hwange District. This expanded program would serve about 70,000 people and establish an effective, working, rural health system at the district level.