Improving Access to Healthcare in Rural Zambia

We’ve been looking back at 2015 so we can tell our supporters how their donations are making an impact on the health of the rural communities where we work.  Here's some of the highlights:

Last year our doctors diagnosed and treated nearly 7,000 patient conditions. Over 250 patients were found to have pneumonia and a further 1168 had other respiratory complaints including asthma. 718 of these patients were young children under 5 years old.

More than half of our patients are children and young people under 18. On Call Africa's volunteer doctors diagnosed and treated over 2,000 children aged 5 and under. Nearly 500 had diarrhoea, over 700 had respiratory complaints, with 143 diagnosed with pneumonia. Other children were brought to clinics with a range of conditions ranging from easily remedied problems to more serious illnesses.

None of this can be achieved without dedicated professionals, so we are very grateful to the team of 12 volunteer doctors as well as the 15 Community Health Workers who gave over 22,000 hours of volunteer time during 2015.

We were pleased that their dedication and our project in Zambia was recognised by the UK Prime Minister Cameron in a speech at Numer 10 Downing Street in London:

"On Call Africa... are helping people in some of the most rural areas of Zambia to access vital health care and in some cases saving lives. By inspiring and training local people as well as their UK supporters they are enabling the people of Zambia to make a difference in their own communities.”

And with a full team of doctors already signed up to work in Zambia  to the end of November we are anticipating that On Call Africa will be able to help even more people during 2016.

“Twalumba”