VARIOUS stakeholders from the heath sector converged in Macheke, Mashonaland East to familiarise with the One-Health Mobile application, a tool which is set to become a key strategic response to combatting the challenges faced by Tuberculosis (TB) survivors and communities affected by TB as well as overcome bottlenecks in ending the TB epidemic.
By Michael Gwarisa
In an interview with HealthTimes on the side-lines of the One Impact Planning meeting in Macheke on Friday, 14 May 2022, Jointed Hands Welfare Organisation (JHWO) Executive Director, Dr Donald Tobaiwa said, “Today’s meeting was looking at the inception of the One Impact Application in Zimbabwe to bring stakeholders up to speed with what the One Impact Application is all about, what it intends to do in the country. At the same time, the meeting was also looking at contextualising the framework that has been used globally to the Zimbabwean situation.
We brought different stakeholders together under the banner of the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC), the national TB programme to facilitate input and integration into the process of coming up with One Impact M-Health application,” said Dr Tobaiwa.
He added that stakeholders demonstrated the need for Zimbabwe to bring into the platform different modules and interventions that contribute towards removal of barriers in the communities for TB patient and all other co-morbidities that relate to TB. Some of the suggested components include the Laboratory factor, tele-counseling among others.
Speaking on the piloting stage, Dr Tobaiwa said, “Now that there has been consensus as well as contribution into the scoping tool, the piloting stage then will likely come through within a period of less than two months because once we have populated our scoping tool, we then can share with the developers and the developers will populate so we need to give them a bit of time like a month or two for that development to happen.
“It will be bounced off us as well and when that happens, we will go the adaptation stage. We will call a meeting where all these critical stakeholders and mainly the MoHCC Information Communication Technology (ICT) department comes onto he platform to ensure that post the piloting stage, post the development stage, this is owned by the country and we have all the rights and all the intellectual property and the savers are grounded from he within the country.”
Six districts have so far been earmarked for piloting of the One Impact Application and these are Bulawayo, Gwanda, Kwekwe, Mazowe, Gweru and Nkayi. These districts have been chosen such that implementers can leverage on the presence of other interventions and also to leverage on the Community Rights and Gender Assessment that was done that also revealed lived experiences in terms of barriers to access services.
Other stakeholders who were present at the planning meeting include but not limited to the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Women Affairs, the Zimbabwe Defence forces (ZDF), the National AIDS Council (NAC), Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism TB Representative /CCM secretariat, NATIONAL TB SURVIVORS NETWORK, the Family AIDS Caring Trust (FACT) and the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health.
OneImpact provides an opportunity for TB survivors, families, communities and NTP including service providers and experts to connect with each other, engage with each other, help each other, and share experiences and challenges on TB and its comorbidities. OneImpact ensures that TB affected and infected are not alone, that they have a voice, and that their challenges are understood and overcome.
The OneImpact platform, ensures that the TB community can also meaningfully inform, shape, and enhance accountability in the TB response, so that quality TB care and support services are available, accessible, and acceptable to all. As this is a digital platform, information on barriers to services, human rights violations, and TB stigma are instantly available and reports on CLM indicators can be immediately generated. This significantly reduces resources required for data collection, analysis, and use.
