Improving Access to Healthcare in Rural Zambia

A typical day in Zambia

We load up the Landcruiser, water and paperwork on top, food and medicines inside. There's space for two or three in the front and another four in the back. It's a beast capable of almost any terrain, though we drew the line at a four feet deep, 30-yard wide river. Strapped in we are ready to go with our local project assistant directing us along with four doctors and a co-ordinator.

Down the highway, built buy the Chinese recently, we travel in serene bliss before taking a left onto what could loosely be termed a dirt track.  Goats, guinea fowl, remnants of crocodile farms, and hand sewn fields of maize flit in and out of view with another car the exception,  and pedestrians the norm, each smiling and greeting happily. 

Villages are passed by – the closer to the highway the better – the biggest with a bar selling fermented maize and sometimes direct power, all with boreholes and a school.  We base ourselves at the rural health centre and speak to the nurse before settling down to night under the stars in our camping pods.  Each morning we rise with the cockerels and travel across to the most difficult to access villages, where On Call Africa is often the only team of doctors to ever have arrived there. 

Clinic is under an open thatched adobe hut or in a school or maybe just a building with half a roof. Wherever it is people arrive. Some have walked with their children through the night arriving at 3am or 4am so they are first in the queue; others pitch up through the day after working in the field. Assisted by a team of volunteer local translators we work though the queue. Nobody complains of waiting too long or the cost of admission (a book is needed which costs 3 pence, we charge to encourage people to bring it back).  People are grateful and willing to engage and the days are long but rewarding.