Dodoma, Tanzania. The Kick-off meeting of the Tanzanian component of the Regional Health Project "Creation of a health network in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda" was held today in Dodoma, Tanzania. The launch event was organized by the Italian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Centro Mondialità Sviluppo Reciproco(CMSR), Doctors with Africa CUAMM and Cooperazione Paesi Emergenti (COPE), in coordination with the Nairobi Office of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and with the Ministries of Health of Tanzania and Zanzibar.
The specific objective of the project in Tanzania and Zanzibar is to increase the availability and quality of Primary Health Services for the health of women and children, by increasing the number of deliveries assisted by qualified personnel in institutionalized structures, strengthening and increasing the number of healthcare facilities providing Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) in the beneficiary communities and reducing the number of neonatal deaths in the target healthcare facilities. There will be a total of 9 health facilities involved in the project, 4 in mainland Tanzania and 5 in Zanzibar.
The main components will be the training of health personnel, advocacy at the community level, and the purchase and distribution of medical equipment and materials that can allow the development of the envisaged services. The project in Tanzania and Zanzibar will also benefit from two regional components of the programme, related to the creation of mobile units for the execution of ultrasound scans in the communities, in order to allow access to this service as much as possible to pregnant women in rural areas or peripherals, as well as the development and dissemination of data collection software for evaluating the performance of healthcare facilities in the maternal-child health sector, in the direction of maximizing impact.
In total, the estimated direct beneficiaries are 24,997, identified among the healthcare personnel of the initiative's target healthcare facilities and pregnant women who access the healthcare services of the target areas (24,637).
Group photo of the kick-off meeting held in Dodoma, Tanzania