MOZ 17 - HEART PATIENTS: A JOURNEY FOR LIFE
Project Location
About 15 km from Nampula, the largest city in northern Mozambique, there is a General Hospital of the Ministry of Health (General Hospital of Marrere), where Sr. Maria Pedron and Dr. Manzio Zobbi, cardiologist, lend their service as volunteers in the field of cardiology for which they are responsible.
The Mozambican healthcare system faces multiple challenges: insufficient access to drinking water and basic sanitation for a large portion of the population; a lack of medicines, equipment, and infrastructure; and inadequate conditions in public hospitals. All of this drives the elite to seek refuge in private clinics and abroad, increasing inequality in healthcare access.
Project description
In the entire northern region of Mozambique, the only functioning cardiology department is at the Marrere-Nampula General Hospital. Patients with cardiovascular conditions arrive here from four provinces: Nampula, Zambezia, Niassa, and Cabo Delgado. Patients are examined and treated, returning for checkups every two months. At each checkup, they are given medicines that, being quite expensive, patients would otherwise be unable to afford. For each visit, patients pay a symbolic fee of approximately 4 euros, but not everyone is able to afford it.
The clinic is also a referral center for children with congenital or other heart conditions. After diagnosis, when necessary and possible, they are referred to the ICOR (Heart Institute) in Maputo for surgery. ICOR offers free diagnosis, treatment, and surgery up to the age of 21, but airfare is required, given that these patients' conditions are often very precarious and the three-day bus journey along very poor roads. The children are accompanied by their mother or a family member.
Patients with these types of conditions are often unable to work (farming is the occupation of the majority of the population), and since most come from very poor families, they are supported with food. The clinic has two assistants who help the sister in charge organize the patients, prepare the various medications, and translate into the local language. The project also provides compensation for a driver who transports the sister and the assistants from Nampula to Marrere.
Objectives
- Guarantee patients who arrive for the first time or who are already in therapy, a quality medical examination, with echocardiography when necessary or other examinations
- Provide sufferers with specific medicines that are often found only in private pharmacies and are very expensive.
- Offer a hope of life to children with heart disease, paying for the round trip from Nampula to Maputo, by plane to both the parent and the caregiver.
Beneficiaries
Direct: about 1.200 patients with heart diseases and the like including several children with congenital heart diseases
Indirect: families
Referent sister of the project: Sr. Maria Pedron
Project's costs