Our Model: Proactive Doorstep Care
Wandikweza provides maternal and child health services at community and primary level in remote areas to provide an entry point to maternal and child health care.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) particularly SDG 3 dwells on universal health coverage.Therefore, community health care forms an integral component of sustaining our programs. Evidence show that community health activities contribute to improvements in health outcomes, especially for women and children, such as the decline in child mortality and malaria fatality rates.
We define health as physical, mental, social, and spiritual well being. Critical to maternal and child health transformation is a participatory approach that builds on what people already know and assets they already have. This gives them confidence that they have worthwhile things they can share. Our model includes many other activities which show the people they have the ability as individuals and as a community to reshape their own lives and their neighborhood. People look at their neighbors with a new set of eyes through the use of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) where the emphasis is on individual and neighborhood assets, not problems.
Wandikweza responds to the “Three Delays” that contribute to high perinatal mortality rates. Our Proactive Doorstep Care combines medical care with family development and community engagement. Through home visits, we identify and address the root causes of poor maternal and child health outcomes. The dedicated Community Health Workers and Nurses on Bikes engage in a holistic initiative that supports ultra poor households to achieve continued social stability for better maternal and child health outcomes. We address the root causes of poor maternal and child health outcomes and not just treating the symptoms.
Why Proactive Doorstep Care?
Because care starts at home.
Wandikweza is committed to transform maternal and child health delivery through Proactive Doorstep Care, an approach to avoid preventable maternal deaths and improve maternal health and health equity. Wandikweza engages communities, strengthens referral systems and builds clinical capacity around maternal and child health. Through equitable partnerships with communities, Wandikweza works to understand the severity and complexity of maternal health inequities, find solutions, and support innovative interventions to eliminate inequities that threaten the health and well-being of all women of child bearing age.
Wandikweza partners with public health facilities at primary care level in providing Proactive Doorstep Care to address barriers that cause delay in seeking, reaching and receiving maternal and child health care in Malawi.
The results?
- women who have knowledge, attitudes, skills and environment to co-manage their care process.
- children are healthier
- families thrive
We work with District Health offices to ensure program implementation is embedded in government systems, leveraging existing government infrastructures and personnel. We integrate the program’s impact data into the government’s data collection systems. This enables outcomes to be routinely and consistently shared with government partners.
We implement our programs within existing government delivery and data systems.
At the frontline of care delivery
Community Health Workers (CHWs)
Through salaried, skilled, supervised and supplied CHWs, communities are lifted out of cycles of poverty and disease. The CHWs promote good health; helping people realize they have assets that can be used. They focus on community assets and not needs.
Nurses on Bikes
The Nurses on Bikes provide care at the doorstep to women of child bearing age before, during and after pregnancy until the child is five years old.
Care delivered at the doorstep - community level
Immunizations
Community Health Workers are trained to administer routine immunizations
Maternal and Child care
Our obstetric care programs aim to remedy the crucial "three delays" that can threaten the lives of both mother and child. These are: delay in deciding to seek care; delay in reaching a health facility; and delay in receiving appropriate treatment at the facility.
Malaria, Diarrhoea, Pneumonia prevention and Treatment
Community Health Workers provide Integrated Community Case Management (iCCM).
Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) screening
At community-level, the CHWs provide NCD interventions that are integrated in their routine work. They conduct door-to-door screenings that seek to improve detect of NCDs and ensure timely referrals for treatment.
Adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health
We provide access to comprehensive sexuality education; services to prevent, diagnose and treat STIs; and counselling on family planning. We empower young people to know and exercise their rights, including the right to delay marriage and the right to refuse unwanted sexual advances.
Malnutrition prevention and Treatment
CHWs screen and treat for malnutrition in under children. Severe malnutrition cases are referred to public health facilities for proper management. They make follow-up and recovery support in the home.
Clinical Refferals
We transfer patients from one level of care to the other when needed for proper management.
