COLOMBIA – Intervention for the improvement of health conditions in the rural population of the Pacific Coast, victims of the armed conflict, without access to health services through health promotion actions and prevention of diseases

The project is based in Colombia in the Chocó, Cauca, Valle and Nariño districts near the Pacific Coast Region. Because there are no care strategies to bring health services closer to these communities where the population has multiple difficulties in terms of access to health services, the Project aims to directly reach victims of the armed conflict with the San Raffaele Hospital Ship to deliver health services and to help reduce morbidity and mortality. The hospital ship is the result of collaboration between AISPO and the Italian Colombian Foundation of Monte Tabor and is funded by the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO). It will bring healthcare services to more than 21 thousand people in one year. 

Objectives

1. Provide health services to mothers, children and families; organize a Hospital Ship mission, which
   lasts 10 days (plus 2 days of navigation), each month to carry out: actions of primary health care,
   medical consultation, pediatric consultation, laboratory tests, cytological evaluations, family planning,
   delivery of medicines, nutritional epidemiological surveillance of children from 0 to 10.
2. Creation of action plans among communities, leaders and community councils; training of traditional
   birth attendants and health promoters in risk prevention, with an ethnic cultural approach.
3. Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, conducting awareness campaigns on sexual and
   reproductive health, HIV / AIDS prevention, adolescent pregnancy, cervical and breast cancer, violence
   and sexual abuse, nutrition, hygiene, beneficiary communities have been (directly or indirectly) victims
   of the armed conflict.

Activities

• General medical consultation through the Hospital Ship
• Medical consultation on growth and development and nutritional epidemiological surveillance in children from 0 to 10 years
• Prenatal check consultations to detect obstetric risk factors, under the application of guidelines and
  protocols and other clinical safety practices
•  Laboratory tests for pregnant women, for identification of risks
• Counseling for rapid HIV / Syphilis test application, pregnant women, and population of childbearing age
• Cervical cancer detection through vaginal cytological evaluation
• Consultation on Family Planning and Sexual and Reproductive Health
• Attention to cases of Violence and Sexual Abuse
• Identify and refer cases for specialized care at higher level of care
• Implementation of an Ambulance Boat, which guarantees the stabilization of patients in critical
  condition, until they reach a higher level of care with closer attention
• Perform the census and the location of the midwives (geolocation). And conducting an evaluation before
  and after the workshop
• Training course for traditional birth attendants and design of ethnic-educational material
• Train community mothers in the AIEPI Strategy, in First Aid, Management of Watery Diarrheal Disease,
  acute respiratory infection, and nutrition, with an ethnic cultural approach
• Identification and construction of the map of health risks of the communities
• Design of ethnic-educational material for awareness campaigns
• Workshops to reinforce knowledge about sexual and reproductive health with an ethnic cultural approach
• Workshops for health promotion, nutrition, hygiene and disease prevention with an ethnic cultural approach.
• Preparation of epidemiological reports
• Apply a food safety survey for a dietary evaluation of the population served in growth and development