AfricaPress-Tanzania: MORE than 2,700 women have benefitted from a project targeting to reduce deaths of pregnant women and babies, thanks to PharmAccess through its Momcare project.
Pharm Access Foundation Manager, Dr Johnson Mali, said beneficiaries were from 215 registered groups from Kilimanjaro and Manyara regions.
Since May last year, PharmAccess initiated a new project dubbed ‘Safari Salama’ or Momcare that ensures quality reproductive health services since early months of pregnancies to reduce and ultimately end deaths related to pregnancy and child delivery.
Dr Mali noted that through the project, pregnant mothers were helped to start attending clinic early while the foundation paid money to respective centres to improve medical services.
The mothers are registered to the improved Community Health Fund (iCHF) with costs being covered by the foundation. For more than a decade, the foundation has been implementing different projects aimed at improving health services with support from the Dutch government.
Either, for five years since 2014, PharmAccess has been collaborating with the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and regional authorities to initiate and operate projects under the improved Community Health Fund (iCHF) in Kilimanjaro and Manyara regions.
More than 100,000 households were registered and got medical services at health centres and hospitals. The model has since been adopted by the government and is used countrywide.
He said in all projects, priority was given to improving the quality of services and ensure the mother and her baby were safe. “This has always been done by first issuing training to medical personnel at respective centres, issuing treatment guidelines and at times supplying medical equipment,” said Dr Mali.
