Zimbabwe Rural Palliative Care Initiative (PCI-Z) Launched
By Phil Di Sorbo, FHSSA Senior Technical Advisor
In August 2008, the Zimbabwe palliative care expansion program led by FHSSA and Island Hospice was officially launched. Many stakeholders and donors have come together to address the urgent need for palliative care in rural Zimbabwe. Most of the palliative care services to date have been urban based, yet the rural areas bear a huge burden of disease, mortality, and poverty. This situation has worsened over the last two years due to political instability, hyperinflation, severe hunger and unemployment.
The six young people who represented Nyadire (six people attended from each of the rural UMC Hospitals) at the December 12-19, 2008 Leadership Development week Outward Bound program at Chimanimani National Park in Zimbabwe. Front left to right: Memory, Lynette, and Daisy. Back left to right: Kudakwashe, Kudakwashe (yes, same name), and Allan.
The overall vision of PCI-Z is to add palliative care to existing home-based care teams in 16 rural areas. This would be done through new staffing, training and mentorship from Island Hospice in Harare and a supply chain of medications. Island Hospice was the first hospice in Africa (1978) and the first FHSSA partner (1999).
Key rural providers to be scaled-up are Seke Rural Hospice and the United Methodist Church Health Care System. The sites include hundreds of villages in the Seke, Mutambara, Nyadire, Old Mutare, and Chikwaka rural areas. The total catchment area includes over 500,000 people, many with no access to services or medications at this time.
Youth Care Club porch meeting at Nyadire Hospital in expansive rural area Zimbabwe
Direct Relief International has made a commitment to provide palliative medicines and supplies to the project. Total funding for the full planned program is not yet available. However, enough implementation funding has been secured to begin the program in three sites: Seke, Chikwaka, and Mutambara. Funding is being provided by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) for training, mentorship, caregiver incentives and one vehicle per site; the Open Society Institute for the Medical Director; the Ford Foundation for Youth Care Clubs; American Jewish World Services for the Seke rural area; Direct Relief International to manage the supplies; and from four American FHSSA partners.
The American hospices partnered with the PCI-Z sites are: Arkansas Hospice in Little Rock; The Community Hospice in Albany, New York; Hospice of Central New York in Liverpool; and VITAS Innovative Hospice Care East Bay in Walnut Creek, California. Key staff involved in the project include: Phil Di Sorbo, Senior Technical Advisor; Elgar Dhilayo, MSW, Project Coordinator Island Hospice; Stephen Williams, MD, Medical Director; Simplisius Ngwerume, Seke Coordinator; and Shingirai Nziradzepatsva, UMC Coordinator.
Adapted with permission from the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa website, February 2009.
To learn more, please visit http://www.FHSSA.org.