A new Zimbabwe Health care delivery project launched
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(+5 rating, 1 votes) Loading ...By GETRUDE GUMEDE
Published: November 9, 2009
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The post independence policy-making framework of “health for all” has been a dream deferred amidst the challenging economic environment and the ravages of HIV-AIDS, the Cholera Epidemic of 2008 and the looming specter of the H1N1 virus. Community Healthcare Options a private trust is rolling out a bold plan to provide affordable, accessible, high quality, high-touch, primary healthcare after securing a U$8million drug credit line, and purchasing equipment to cover 100 clinics. The plan is strongly founded on low cost as external credit line lessens the pressure to seek higher margins of return on the investment thus establishing a clear heavy pricing break-away from the dominant and traditional healthcare models.
This could not have come at a better time given the structural challenges facing the health care delivery system in Zimbabwe. The revolutionary plan revolves around the innovative use of a robust scalable informatics platform that is actuarially modeled to Zimbabwe’s disease burden to manage the workflow away from the traditional heavy administrative expense overhang. Clients clients will pay less than U$1 per regular General Practitioner’s medical consultation. It’s sweet music to the broader majority of Zimbabweans (estimated at over 95%) without regular access to medical care, and a comforting prospect to the many in the Diaspora with their loved ones back home. More information is available at their website www.communityhealthcareoptions.org
Community Healthcare Options Trust has recruited over 125 Zimbabwean trained doctors, and over 250 nurses to see to the aggressive rollout of the service covering the largely under-serviced high density areas, small towns, growth points all the way to all major chief’s homesteads. Dr Raymond Chamba a board trustee confidently explained and enthused that “the plan is a structured financial leadership foisted on the social dimensions need to provide basic health care for all”.
It is universally understood that organizations that place a priority on affordable health care coverage stand to gain from enhanced productivity and making themselves employers of choice in the new struggle to attract and retain top talent. Individuals and communities that have more access to affordable primary health care are more productive than those without access to such. With the prevailing service delivery challenges the plan offers real hope to the many unemployed, informally, and formally employed that have traditionally left out of health schemes like security guards, retail, public transport, agricultural and general construction industry employees. It also offers an opportunity for employers in an environment of financial illiquid to put something meaningful on the compensation table in terms of uplifting the welfare of their workers. The portability of the Community Healthcare Options program provides a realistic national and regional template for universal health coverage.
Its sickening to note that many people in Zimbabwe are succumbing to common ailments that have more to do with lack of primary health access, which has been precipitated by the lack of basic health and service delivery infrastructure than anything else. “Our plan aims to bridge the gap between the needs of ordinary people and the inability of traditional institutions to deliver on the mandate of improved welfare for the majority” vouched Dr Raymond Chamba.
For a country trying to find its economic footing, healthcare access plays a very pivotal and seminal, as Dr Chamba notes that “we can’t get the country working again without getting our people well again”. In the absence of much needed financing from multi-lateral agencies, innovative private initiatives are the answer to Zimbabwe’s great enduring problems in ensuring the health of her people, and this is one. What the health intervention program promises is a very lean, mean, and keen cost effective health delivery system that targets people in their various communities.
The model identifies access to drugs and affordability as the critical lynchpins to the improved health of our people. After extensive research and pathological mapping for Zimbabwe the program provides for the supply of commonly needed anti-biotics and painkillers all for a market changing price of U$1 for a full adult dose. The Diaspora scheme calls for U$30 for a family of 5 for a whole year! The drugs offered are amoxicillin, metronidazole, cotrimoxazole, Doxycline, indonethacine, diclofenac and paracetamol. There has been overwhelming response from medical practitioners to participation in the project given the clearly attractive compensation and retention scheme offered.
The underlying logic of this low-access health access program lies in the superior deployment of information systems, and the minimal investment in infrastructure like big traditional corporate offices and associated costs. Each community health center operating from appropriately retrofitted and remodeled homesteads (for the high density areas) will operate as its own independent administrative unit deploying information systems to keep costs at an absolute minimum.
In order for this model to be operational you need the critical mass of people contributing clients/patients per doctor and a basic monthly contribution of U$3 (for an average family of 5) on the prepayment option or U$2 per person per visit for walk in clients. This effectively makes doctor consultation U$0, 60 per person per first visit in a 30day cycle for the prepayment plan. Dr Chamba opined that “the plan makes it possible and actively encourages people to go for regular doctor check-ups even if they’re not sick”. The fee structure will in and by itself make the model financially self-sustaining and the drug access part will ensure its relative profitability given the anticipated heavy and pent-up demand. Community Healthcare Options advised me that revenue would be responsibly ploughed into expansion until you have a world-class affordable private health clinic model through resultant stand-alone centers.
The health intervention program envisaged and marshaled by Community Healthcare Options does have vicious detractors in the health care industry in Zimbabwe resting on the rented support of their political benefactors who make it possible for them to fleece the hapless and helpless majority characterized by the “health-scare” environment currently in place.
Dr Raymond Chamba went onto to say “as a death knell to rapid and unconscionable profiteering the plan will have its vocal institutional critics, but as a clear way for the majority to access badly needed care…the people will demand this service, and breakdown this existing Berlin Wall of glaring health service delivery inequities” He went on to state that they “ urgently call upon the powers that be to tear down this wall and let the people get free from the fear of an early, certain and painful death because of in-access to basic care”. In a parting bold statement Dr Chamba boldly stated that “ the plan will work because it’s a God given anointment towards alleviating the health plight of our people, through this plan evil will again be roundly defeated as all our communities stand to benefit”. We certainly wish this kind of community centric, morally founded interventions the regulatory space and public support to work.
This is the affordable health care delivery system that Zimbabweans have been yearning for time immemorial.Persimists and all detractors should take note that this envisaged peoples program will be a resounding success
where can we get your clincs in harare and in marondera when are opening.
This is a very wise step you have taken Dr Chamba.If this thing is successful you will bring health back to the community because health is not just the absence of disease but also the state of mental, physical and emotional well being. May God bless you