Community Health Africa Trust (CHAT) runs mobile health clinics providing services in very remote northern Kenya. They offer antenatal care, child growth monitoring, child immunisations, basic curatives, HIV/AIDS testing and counselling, and health education on HIV prevention, hygiene, and the dangers of female genital mutilation awareness. However, the core focus is reproductive health and family planning.
“Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.” - UNICEF
But the challenges are huge. These people are soooo poor.
Currently, the Kenyan population has reached 37 million and is growing at a rate of 1.3 million new babies each year. On average, each woman in the nomadic communities of northern Kenya has seven children!
What does CHAT do?
CHATs services are delivered by vehicle, bicycle and on foot. And when traveling to the most remote, nomadic communities, we travel with camels. The mobile camel clinic’s routes and the location of its stops are constantly adapted to suit the communities we serve. If the community has moved in search of water and pasture, then the clinic follows them. Our motor clinics (in distinctive yellow Land Rovers) use a more regular route, with set dates at each station. The clinics are organized to reach at least 35-40 communities monthly. The result is that each time the mobile clinic team arrives at one of its various locations; they find a group of people waiting for them, often under the shade of an Acacia tree. The vehicles, bikes, or camels are parked, a table or two is set-up, medicines un-loaded, and the treatments and consultations begin. And they continue for as long as the light permits. The strategy is basic, flexible, and effective.
Family Planning
In 2011 CHAT provided 10,000 women with contraceptives. Until 2008, most women used the Pill or the injectable Depo Provera for contraception. However, in the last two years (2009-2011), with increased awareness-raising and availability through CHAT, over 11,000 women have taken up the five-year protection offered by implants and over 200 have received tubal ligations. Currently, demand for long-term methods of family planning in these areas is exceeding CHAT’s capacity to provide them.
CHAT has a real problem trying to get funding for family planning, it just doesn't seem to be 'fashionable'! (Like HIV/AIDS funding). So CHAT relies on little bits and pieces, for example, $10 per month donated by ex-volunteers or friends of volunteers. like YOU!
Female Genital mutilation
The cultural practice of female genital mutilation is illegal in Kenya. However, this traditional "rite of passage" for young women is deeply embedded in the cultural fabric of many tribes and is still widely practised in all the communities that are served by CHAT’s mobile clinics. Clinic staff attempt to raise awareness of the physical and emotional dangers attached to this activity. Concerns are addressed through community discussion groups and local schools. Awareness education is supported by the use of video material. Education efforts target young men who are encouraged to debate the ongoing necessity for such a practice and to eliminate their expectation of a “circumcised” bride.
HIV/AIDS
Since 2004, CHAT through its clinics and network of community-based counsellors, has succeeded in counselling and testing an increasing number of people for HIV, from 641 in 2004, to a staggering 16,000 in 2011. Of those tested for HIV, CHAT found a total of 1,345 to be HIV positive and has assisted these people with treatment for opportunistic infections, support groups, and has linked them with other organisations offering further support, such as antiretroviral treatments.
It is all about the Community Workers
Because of fluctuating funding, CHAT’s mobile clinic is only able to visit a community approximately once a month and, of course, problems persist in our absence. Many of the communities we serve are so remote that we are the only source of reliable health care. Because of this, we train individuals in communities to become family planning community based distributers and community based HIV/AIDS counsellors and testers. These people provide on-going support to the local populations when the clinic is not present. They also serve as CHAT’s “ears” on the ground, giving us regular feedback, through their formal and informal reports, on the community’s satisfaction with the services we provide, on the needs of the communities, and also on the community’s whereabouts as they are often on the move.
