The Cordaid Global Office team led by the Chief Finance Officer Lorena Paz Quintero in the company of the Regional Director Heleen van de Beek, were in Zimbabwe from April 20-22, on a familiarisation mission with the operations of the project office and an appraisal of the results-based financing (RBF) program.
During the visit the team met with representatives from the Ministry of Health and Child Care and the World Bank, to get an appreciation and updates regarding the implementation of the RBF program that is co-funded by the two entities and Cordaid Zimbabwe is the project implementation entity. Cordaid has been the PIE since the onset of the project in 2012 with a coverage that has increased over the years to 18 rural districts plus 34 urban districts implementing the Urban Voucher component which targets the urban poor pregnant women and offers tokenistic vouchers to promote access to maternal and child health services. With the project having shown success over the years the country is now in the process of institutionalization whereby government is taking over full implementation and support of RBF as measures to strengthen sustainability of the program.
Site visits were made to Bulawayo City Health Directorate and Mpilo Central Hospital which is a referral facility for all primary level clinics that are enrolled in the UV program in Bulawayo city, which is one of the two cities implementing the program. During the meeting with the Mpilo team, the Chief Medical Officer explained the role that the central hospital plays in the UV program as it receives and attends to complicated cases including caesarean cases that the clinics may not have the capacity to handle. Ambulance facilities are offered free of charge from the clinics to the hospital for such cases. Dr Sibanda the Bulawayo City Health Director expressed how the program had contributed to the reduction in maternity mortality, increase in institutional delivery, improvements of clinics infrastructure, improvement in availability of medicines as clinics were using their subsidies to procure medicines. However, challenges were on the brain drain that was crippling the city and affecting the provision of quality health care services, which however they were trying to counter through the hiring of locum staff to boost the depleting staff complement in clinics.
A visit to Midlands Province included a courtesy call to the Provincial Medical Director’s office before proceeding to a rural health facility Chikwingwizha, to understand the operations of the rural component of the RBF.
The CFO commended the government and Cordaid Zimbabwe for saving lives by ensuring that the vulnerable populations were receiving the much-needed health care for free. She also noted the concerns raised regarding continuation of funding and expressed the urgent need for the organisation to strengthen resource mobilisation so that gains achieved over the years would not be eroded if current funding came to an end.
The Regional Director also reiterated the same sentiments and shared that it was imperative that the project office expands its scope in the health response as well as tap into other arenas such as education where the concept of RBF could be adopted.
