The U.S. gov­ern­ment has awarded 49 mil­lion dol­lars to World Vision for an aid project in Mozam­bique. The grant money will be used to improve health access, water and san­i­ta­tion in Mozambique’s Zam­bézia Province. World Vision is also using 12 mil­lion dol­lars of their own money for the project’s budget.

From this World Vision press release, we read more about the details of the wide rang­ing project that will even include cell phones and bicycles.

Named “Ogu­maniha,” which means “united for a com­mon pur­pose” in the local Chuabo lan­guage, the pro­gram will be funded by the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment (USAID) to address the health, water, san­i­ta­tion and agri­cul­tural needs of the province’s chil­dren, women, and fam­i­lies in an inte­grated way. Train­ing, tech­nol­ogy, mobile phones and even bicy­cles will be part of the pro­gram.

“This is an excit­ing oppor­tu­nity to sub­stan­tially improve the lives of chil­dren, women and fam­i­lies in Zam­bézia province,” said Fran­cois Batalin­gaya, MPH, the World Vision human­i­tar­ian affairs spe­cial­ist who led the program’s design. “Health, includ­ing respond­ing to the grow­ing HIV and AIDS prob­lem, will be the main focus while all the inter­ven­tions are aimed to work together to strengthen the com­mu­ni­ties we reach.”

The peo­ple of Zam­bézia now have very lim­ited access to health­care, with only 179 health cen­ters and fewer than 40 trained Mozam­bi­can doc­tors avail­able for the nearly 3.8 mil­lion res­i­dents of the province, roughly the size of Wash­ing­ton state. A lack of infra­struc­ture means many must walk more than 20 kilo­me­ters (12 miles) to obtain care at health posts that aren’t always equipped for mater­nity or emer­gency needs. The lack of health ser­vices and san­i­ta­tion, along with food inse­cu­rity, con­tribute to the spread of dis­eases through­out the region. The HIV rate among adults jumped to 19 per­cent, from 13 per­cent, between 2000 and 2007.

World Vision and part­ners will train com­mu­nity health work­ers and equip them with mobile phones and bicy­cles to make rounds in remote areas so women with high-risk preg­nan­cies, new moth­ers and new­borns can have access to care and con­sul­ta­tion. Insecticide-treated bed nets will be dis­trib­uted to house­holds to guard against malaria. Bicy­cle ambu­lances, mobile out­reach teams and wait­ing huts for preg­nant women will also be provided.

The pro­gram will improve san­i­ta­tion through “Tippy-Taps” for hand­wash­ing in schools and build­ing latrines, and boost agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment by cre­at­ing “Junior Farmer” irri­ga­tion groups for orphans and vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren. It will also pro­mote and finance demand-driven invest­ments for agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion and liveli­hoods, and build the capac­ity of com­mu­nity groups and gov­ern­ment depart­ments at provin­cial and dis­trict lev­els for deci­sions that impact liv­ing con­di­tions for the rural population.

Like

Unlike