CIDRZ at National Labour Day 2017

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Every year Zambia celebrates Labour Day with a march past His Excellency the President and an opportunity to decorate a float to display an organisation activities and contribution to the nation. 2017 was no exception and this year CIDRZ took part in style! Over thirty staff members volunteered to march, and our float displayed our healthcare programme and training activities to improve health in Zambia through providing Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision, Cervical Cancer Screening, Preterm Resources, Education and Effective Management of Infants (PREEMI), TB programming to strengthen health systems in Zambia Correctional Services, and HIV Care and Treatment to help Zambia reach the UNAIDS 90:90:90 treatment targets.  Think CIDRZ for a healthy Zambia!

CIDRZ facilitates National ARV Logistic Systems Training

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CIDRZ, with the support from the US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnership, is conducting a National ARV Logistics System Workshop to prepare health centre, hospital, District Health Management Teams, and Provincial staff to use the Standard Operating Procedures Manual for the Management of the National ARV Logistics System, and the job aids, to perform tasks necessary to successfully manage the Antiretroviral (ART) drugs logistics system.
During the official opening of the workshop, Chongwe District Health Director, Dr. Charles Msiska, emphasised the need for health workers to “give patients comprehensive care, don’t just see them as an HIV patient or look at numbers.”
The trainers guide being used was prepared as part of the U.S. funded DELIVER Technical Assistance support to the Ministry of Health and aims at strengthening logistics management of ARV drugs. DELIVER, is a six-year worldwide technical assistance support contract funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and PEPFAR.

Training Health Staff to Implement Differentiated Ways to Provide ART

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With support from the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and CDC partnership, CIDRZ is conducting a Training of Trainers workshop on how to implement a differentiated care model for people on Antiretroviral Treatment (ART).

The training is aimed at preparing the community outreach teams to roll out the implementation of the Community Adherence Groups (CAGs) and the Urban Adherence Groups (UAGs) following the approval by the Ministry of Health to roll out differentiated care models.

With this model, clinically stable patients who have been on ART for a minimum of six months, can form a group of six members. The members of these groups in turn select one person per month to go and collect ARV’s on their behalf. This means that each member of the group is expected to visit the clinic twice a year – to collect drugs for their colleagues – but also to fulfil their clinical appointments as well.

This model will help reduce congestion in clinics, and give time for other members of the group to engage in other activities. With this model, we expect more retention of stable clients on ART as well as reduction in the workload for the existing health workers in healthy facilities.

This type of differentiated care programming will help Zambia to achieve the UNAIDS 90:90:90 treatment targets.

CIDRZ – SHARE LSHTM Support UNZA Civil Engineering WASH Research

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CIDRZ through the LSHTM – SHARE Consortium recently awarded research grants to Changwe Mafuta and Simapimbi Munaye, both 5th year University of Zambia (UNZA) School of Engineering Scholars to finish their research on sanitation engineering projects that will benefit Zambia.

CIDRZ and the Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity (SHARE) Consortium of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) collaborated on the Creating Demand for Sanitation (SanDem) project with funding from the UK Department for International Development. It is through this project that CIDRZ was pleased to award 2000 British Pounds Sterling each to deserving UNZA Civil Engineering students Mr Changwe Mafuta and Mr Samapimbi Munaye. The research projects of these two gentlemen rose about the others in their specific aim to address local sanitation challenges from an engineering perspective. These grants will support the completion of these student’s research project work. Funding was made available by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
Mr Mafuta’s project is titled “Developing a lever, eco-sanitary toilet that does not use water to fush faecal matter, and use solar energy to treat waste, while Mr Munaye’s project is “Improving sanitation through recycling of plastic solid waste materials.”

Attending the event on behalf of CIDRZ – which was part of the University of Zambia 2016 Academic Year prize giving ceremony – was Chief Scientific Officer Dr Roma Chilengi, Director of Human Resources, Roselyne Raelly and Coordinator of the CIDRZ SanDem project, Joyce Chinyama Chilekwa. The Vice Chancellor of UNZA, Dr Luke Evuta Mumba, officiated the event and wanted to recognize and appreciate all stakeholders in the engineering training. “This country cannot develop without a sound engineering desk,” he emphasized.