‘Juntos para Saude’ Community Health Project
The ‘Juntos para Saude’ Community Health Project had its beginnings in the ‘Sal, Luz e Saude’ (Salt, Light Health) project of the Diocese of Niassa. This was begun in 2005 to address the health needs of people living along the shore of Lake Niassa; a remote area of northern Mozambique.
Many children were dying from easily preventable and treatable diseases, such as malaria, diarrohea, respiratory infections, malnutrition; women were dying during pregnancy and child birth and there were indications that HIV was spreading fast. Half of the population lived more than 15 miles from a basic health facility and the only means of transport were foot or boat.
Over these past 19 years, a wide variety of community health projects have been operating in the Diocese of Niassa. It focusses on listening to the communities key concerns and hopes and working with them to develop a plan that would respond to the area’s health in ways that made optimal use of local resources.
These might be training local volunteers to become Community Health Workers (CHW’s) and setting up community health committees to oversee the CHW’s or mobilising the wider community to participate in health interventions or building health clinics or initiating WASH projects. It has varied in different forms over the years, according to needs and resources. The services they provide include health education, treatment of common illnesses, ante-natal care and safe delivery, family planning, HIV counselling and testing and data collection.
Today MANNA is supporting the ‘Juntos para Saude’ Community Health work. Currently this project works in communities and schools training people on daily health issues such as malaria, pregnancy, cholera, diarrhoea, etc.
Part of ‘Juntos para Saude’ is an innovative project called ‘Studies for Life’ which is having a hugely positive impact in secondary schools by using a different approach to education. Watch the videos below to learn more about ‘Juntos para Saude’ and ‘Studies for Life’.
This ‘Juntos para Saude’ Community Health work cover a wide range of projects.
The slides at the bottom give an overview of the work and the current needs. Can you help?