Words of Impact From Zambia
Zambia secured its independence from the UK in 1964, and the following year CMMB began working in the nascent country. The nation was heavily beset by the AIDS crisis throughout the 1970s and 80s, which left a huge number of orphaned and vulnerable children. Because of this, many NGOs in the country were forced to scramble to address the fallout from the disease without being able to tackle the roots.
In the beginning of the 2000s, the US began to roll out the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) to tackle the global epidemic of AIDS. Because of its longstanding ties to both local NGOs and government ministries in Zambia, CMMB was well-positioned to structure and deliver US-backed community health programming aimed at addressing AIDS. Further, because CMMB is a faith-based organization, they frequently found purchase and trust with beneficiary populations that other groups did not have.
Today, CMMB Zambia is a locally-registered NGO focused on improving access to services for maternal and child health, preventing and treating HIV infection with a focus on adolescent girls, and providing services for orphans and other children left vulnerable by parental AIDS deaths, and poverty. This work has been complemented with other focused efforts including emergency response (such as the distribution of over 500,000 water purification sachets during the 2018 cholera outbreak) and health systems strengthening (including distributing donations of medicines and medical supplies to partner health facilities).
In 2020 alone, CMMB’s Medical Donations Program sent five shipments to support CMMB Zambia with a total value of over $8 million. These shipments included purchased products to support the ongoing pandemic response, however, the bulk of items were product donations selected by CMMB Zambia in order to ensure that facilities and community health workers (CHW) were empowered to continue providing regular services to their beneficiary communities.
From October through December of 2020, CMMB Zambia staff took time to visit some of the partner health facilities that had received donated products to learn how the donations were used and what the continuing needs were. They collected some moving accounts of the impact of donations.
Bernadette Mafuch at the Lutaba Rural Health Centre in Mwandi, Zambia.
Miss Bernadette Mafuchi is the Second Nurse in Charge at the Lutaba Rural Health Centre of Mwandi. When asked about CMMB’s donations, she said, “We are thankful to CMMB for the support being rendered to the facility through their medical donations program. Our facility was recently opened and is experiencing many challenges, among others, lack of equipment and other supplies.” She had feared that without the donations of CMMB, the facility may have even been delayed in starting to see patients.
Namatama Siyemento at the Mwandi Mission hospital.
Mrs. Namatama Siyemento, the Medical Licenceate at the Mwandi Mission hospital, an anchor facility for much of CMMB’s work in Zambia works directly in the inventory needs. The facility is the only referral hospital for a rural and spread-out region of approximately 40,000 people. When asked about CMMB donations, Mrs. Siyemento said, “The need for equipment and medicines cannot be overemphasized. The equipment and medicines we receive from CMMB have been of great help to the hospital and we only pray that this partnership will continue.”
Ms. Mabuku and her family are frequently visited by Community Health Workers.
Non-medical members of the communities served also had a lot to say to the team about the impact of CMMB. Ms. Mabuku is a mother in the village of Kasaya, 20 kilometers from the Mwandi Hospital. The village is regularly served by two community health workers (CHWs) who visit by bicycle. Where residents previously had to undertake a full day journey to get their children immunized, or get checked out for an illness, they could now depend on the CHWs, who come stocked with CMMB medicines as well. Reflecting on the impact, Ms. Mabuku said, “I am very happy with the services being offered to our community by CMMB. We can now easily access health services from the CHW who is working in our community.”
Throughout the past year, CMMB’s local offices in Haiti, Peru, Kenya, South Sudan and Zambia did not forget the commitments made to its partner communities. The staff in all five countries including Zambia worked bravely and diligently to ensure that critical health programs continued and that those in need still had a place to go. The MDP staff is honored to get to support that work.