HEALTH
MOZAMBIQUE REPORT CARD
STORIES OF CHANGE The Road Ahead Rural ambulance services drive home the need for speedy care for moms in labour.
Women and adolescent girls who accessed sexual and reproductive health services in the previous year:
BEFORE
AFTER
Women (age 20 to 49)
25%
60%
Acina, 28, is one of the thousands of mothers who benefited from the emergency medical transfer services (a.k.a. motorcycle ambulances) that the Healthy Women and Girls project in Mozambique supported in 2022. She lives in a rural area in the Moma District of Mozambique, and the nearest rudimentary health centre is 30 kilometres away. When Acina arrived at the centre,
she was experiencing severe labour complications. She was terrified because many women in her community had died there; without equipment like ultrasound machines, newborn-resuscitation tables and sterilization tools, the health facility wasn’t prepared to provide critical care that women required. Fortunately, the clinic had an ambulance, so Acina was taken to a hospital 250 kilometres away
Adolescent girls
18%
31%
How we made it happen
• Held discussion groups with youth, women and men to dismantle myths about contraceptives and sexually transmitted infections • Improved patient confidentiality in health facilities • Worked with traditional leaders to change community attitudes toward contraceptives Petitioned government and community organizations to make sexual and reproductive health services available and easily accessible • Helped health facilities in the regions served • by the project record 17,440 new users of family-planning methods between April 2020 and March 2021
“I was taken care of, and now my
son and I are doing well.” – Acina
and received the care she and her baby boy required. “Without the ambulance, getting the care she needed wouldn’t have been an option,” explains Odia Marcel, director of the Moma District hospital, where Acina was sent.
18 2022 Annual Report | DIGEST
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