Africa AHEAD’s Engineer Ngoni Chirindo briefing Executive Director Regis Matimati on the works being done at the Mutare Provincial Hospital Covid 19 Isolation Centre.
9th July 2020.
Photo and report by Morgan Haiza.
Africa AHEAD is working with Action Against Hunger, funded by ECHO to contribute to the national effort to combat the spread of Covid 19 in Zimbabwe. Our officers have been working at the isolation center at Mutare Provincial Hospital to upgrade the water supply. Plumbing works now at 80% while construction works is at 90% completion. In Mutare infectious disease hospital planning has is starting for the proposed incinerator .
Water quality monitoring is now being done frequently in Mutare city. Bacteriological water samples are being taken every Thursday, making sure that water quality in the city is closely monitored. Although wearing of masks by the general public is improving, social distancing is being poorly observed in bus queues, supermarkets and banks. In total over 7,000 people have been reached during the first week of July 2020.
The Health Promotion Volunteers have been trained and have now gone back to their respective wards, and the councilors have give them the green light to visit households. Education on COVID 19 has already commenced in the 19 wards of Mutare City. Communities have already drawn some action plans on what they want to do in terms of preventing the pandemic in their various neighborhoods.
In the past week 369 households were visited by these trained volunteers and education on prevention of COVID 19 was passed on to 1,845 people now reached with key messages on COVID 19. The activity is being done by either door to door or in groups of 15 households to avoid large gatherings which is not compliant with the COVID 19 rules.
Some wards they have already started construction of hand washing facilities (tippy taps) so as to enhance hand washing with soap and running water. To date 7 tippy taps (see above) have been erected and are now functional in ward 7. A very responsive group in ward 8 have made a plan to monitor their children movements so as to minimize the spread of COVID 19.