The GEANCO Modular Clinic Initiative In Limelight

The modular clinic initiative is a robust plan to reposition health care delivery to underserved communities by leveraging existing and culturally accepted institutions. Traditional birth attendance is one of such institutions, which our team now leverages on. The Julia Burke Maternity Centre is an efficient hybrid of our ideals of maternal and infant health practice and culturally accepted traditional birth attendance. We have made good progress with integrating modern conventional maternity practice with a traditional institution.

This initiative is based on five key metrics, the legs of the modular clinic initiative. These metrics keep us in the focus on what we hope to achieve in our modular clinics.

The Five Legs of the GEANCO Modular Clinic Initiative.

  1. An Equipped Micro Facility that effectively meets the needs of its users.
  2. Operated by Trained Birth Attendants who adequately diagnose, manage and care for their patients.
  3. Observing Good Management Protocols including a well-defined organizational structure, operations system, financial accounting and customer relationship management.
  4.  Held Accountable with Periodic Inspections to ensure that standards are met and integrity sustained.
  5. In Collaborations with Medical Officers – doctors, medical lab scientists and others who offer specialized services to enable holistic care.

Our Progress since late 2020 and January 2021

Our team has begun addressing these legs upon which the initiative is built.

  1. We have provided medical tools both diagnostic and curative tools.
  2. We have continued the training of the medical staff. In 2020, our team trained 215 traditional attendants.
  3. Training in customer relations, financial records keeping have been carried out and is still ongoing. The management protocol training module spans financial records, customer relationship management, and organizational design.
  4. The digitization of patient data capturing system is now in an advanced stage. With the new system, telemedicine will be made possible as all patient medical records can easily be reached via a cloud-based database. With the digital data platform, telemedicine and virtual consultations become possible – medical consultants can easily have access to the clinical histories of patients and proffer solutions via phone without physically visiting the facility.
  5. The facility now has a collaboration with a medical laboratory centre that helps to offer ultrasound services to pregnant mothers at cheap rates.
  6. Routine infant immunization has begun in the centre.
  7. In response to yellow fever outbreaks, the facility has begun yellow fever immunization for its host community.

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