Maiduguri’s mobile clinics
Three mobile health clinics have just been launched in Maiduguri, Nigeria. 250 patients are received every day in each clinic. How do they work? How did the launching go? Explanations of Margot Vappereau, the officer responsible for the health and mobile clinics project.
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Women and children are waiting for their consultation at the mobile health clinic. The population has hardly access to health services as the closest center is 45 minutes away by foot.
What is the principle of a mobile clinic?
The activities of our three mobile clinics started a month ago. Their objective: to bring a support to the local health facilities and to offer free general consultations. A pre and post-natal follow-up is also achieved. The teams come every day in one of the three sites of Bolori II neighborhood and install the facilities. At the evening, each team removes its clinic, loads the material on the truck and comes back to the base. We chose these three sites for safety reasons.
We received 3500 patients in a month, Maiduguri inhabitants but also intern displaced people who currently live in Bolori II neighborhood. The most frequent diseases at this time of the year are malaria, enteric fever. Many Nigerians suffer from eyes and ears infections but also from respiratory infections because of their insalubrious conditions of leaving. We also detected malnutrition cases.
Each medical team of the three clinics is composed of two people who are in charge of the patients’ registration, of two nurses for the general consultations and of a midwife for pregnancy consultations. An officer is in charge of the free distribution of medications that are necessary to the treatment.
In case of a vital emergency, we accompany the patients to
Maiduguri’s main hospital, with which we reached an agreement.
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Officers in charge of the medication distribution. The medication comes from an international purchase order and are distributed for free to the patients given their needs. On average, 1600 medication are distributed each day on each of the three mobile clinics.
The difficult start of the mobile clinics
The day before the launching of our activities, the teams met the populations to get them informed. We collectively work with our community leaders for the management of the mobile clinics. 150 patients beneficiated from the mobile clinics’ healthcare on the first day, but a violent storm occurred and destroyed the shelter dedicated to consultations. It took four hours to the complete team to repair everything. We are now waiting for the arrival of more solid tents that should come soon.
On the beginning of July, we started the campaign of vaccination for pregnant women who come for the pregnancy follow-up. From mid-July to mid-August, the teams have been distributing the first mosquito nets to pregnant women and to children under five years old and at the end of July, the activities of screening of malnutrition cases under five years old started. We also plan to fill out our activities panel on the mobile clinic. We also spread our activities to the setting up of awareness session on health education and to the family planning service. We wish to train the health community workers so that they spread prevention and awareness messages among populations.
©Première Urgence Internationale
The nurses in charge of the general consultations. They receive patients from every age and from different places.
Première Urgence Internationale has had a presence in Nigeria since 2016. The mission also intervenes in the food security field to bring a support to the populations who fled Boko Haram.
