Catherine Sasman
15 October 2008
Windhoek — The recently held clinic health committee competition in the Omaheke Region was won by the Sendingplaas committee for its outstanding performance in community-based tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS control and management activities.
The competition has become an annual event to encourage clinic health committees (CHCs) intensify community participation and inclusion in health matters affecting themselves and/or their communities.
Traditionally, doctors and health professionals were sole dispensers of health care, determining how, when and where healthcare was provided. The community and patients were often mere passive recipients of such health services.
But, said Executive Director of the Advanced Community Healthcare Services (CoHeNa), Dr Cordelia Zvavamwe, this approach has often resulted in failures in disease control and management because the human element has been neglected and people did not want to be involved in projects about which they had little information or the value of which was doubtful.
As a result, she said, CoHeNa mobilised community members to democratically elect representatives that would stand in for them in health matters in each clinic catchment area in the Omaheke and Hardap regions.
These selected members were given training and taken on board as active partners in community-based control and management of TB, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.
These committees, said Zvavamwe, enable involvement of marginalised, poor and voiceless communities to become active designers and implementers of their own health care.
As a result, said Zvavamwe, CoHeNa and the Ministry of Health and Social Services through the committees have successfully attained the internationally set targets for TB control by detecting over 70 percent of the new TB cases in the 10 Omaheke communities served by these health committees.
Through this work, over 85 percent of the TB cases reported in the region has been cured since 2001, reaching 100 percent cure rate in the first quarter of 2007.
The region has also reduced TB treatment defaulter rates from 51.4 percent to zero percent.
These health committees have established food generating projects like goat and chicken farming in Epukiro, gardening in Leonardville, Otjinene, Tallismanus and Sendingplaas.
The projects help TB and HIV patients with food, as well as adherence to often grueling and long-term treatment regimes.
"While participatory approaches are not a panacea to social and health development, we as CoHeNa believe that they go a long way in addressing both principles of equity and empowerment as demonstrated here by the Omaheke community," said CoHeNa board vice chairperson, At Shikwambi at the prize-giving ceremony held last week.
The other winners of the competition were Tallismanus (second), Onderombapa (third), Epukiro Post 3, Leonardville and Omitara (holding fifth position), Otjinene, Corridor and Witvlei.
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