Programs
In addition to offering in-patient and out-patient clinical care, St. Albert's has the following programs to help patients and families, and to keep the hospital open:
St. Albert’s Voluntary Counseling and Testing Program
- Counseling before and after HIV testing.
- Basic counseling of patients and caregivers in the hospital and at home.
- General counseling, e.g., bereavement, suicide, social problems.
This man and his wife have just completed HIV counseling at the hospital’s New Start Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centre (VCT). They came to the hospital because he suffered from fever and prolonged coughing.
St. Albert’s Home-based Care Program
The St. Albert's home-based care team includes a nurse, a person who provides spiritual care for patients and families, and, often, one or two nursing students. The team travels by pick-up truck to villages on the escarpment and in the valley to visit the homes of the chronically ill (for example, people with AIDS, asthma, hypertension, cancer, tuberculosis (TB), or disabilities).
When possible, the team provides families with simple medicines such as the pain reliever paracetamol, bandages, lotions, and protective items such as gloves and linen savers.
Man with AIDS and peripheral neuropathy in a village on the escarpment. AIDS often causes excruciating pain in the legs. St. Albert’s was able to provide him with a wheelchair that helped him move around his homestead.
St. Albert’s trains two levels of volunteers to care for the chronically ill:
A primary caregiver. This person is taught to care for a chronically ill family member. The home-based care team then follows up with home visits. The program has trained more than 1,000 primary caregivers.
Community volunteers. These community members are trained in basic counseling, nutrition, and nursing care. They visit families of the chronically ill. When the St. Albert's home-based care team arrives in the village, the volunteer directs the team to the families in greatest need and tells them about who lived in urban areas when they became sick and have returned to the village to live out their illness.
Community volunteers are unpaid but receive incentives for their help. For example, a volunteer may not have to stand in a queue at the borehole, grinding mill, or health clinic. Or people in the village may weed the volunteer’s field or harvest or store the person’s grain.
The home-based care team formerly traveled to communities three times per week, but chronic fuel shortages, rising cost and inflation have reduced that to twice a month, and sometimes they can’t go for months.
Other social services provided by St. Albert’s and its home-based care team
- Information on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections in schools, rural communities and farm resettlement areas.
- Support for widows, single mothers, orphan-headed families and grandmothers raising orphans. Support can include food, school fees, uniforms, and seeds and fertilizer.
- Orphan care. The hospital pays the fees and expenses for several hundred orphans to keep them in school.
- Establishing peer groups for youth in and out of school.
- Helps families organize income-generating projects.
- Spiritual care and support services.
St. Albert’s Nurses’ Training Program
Nurses Training Program is an effort by St. Albert’s to curb the loss of trained nurses from the country. “We have joined hands with the Ministry of Health to train new nurses for the country,” Dr. Elizabeth says. “It is an exciting venture, but one with difficulties because we lack books, teaching aids and other necessities.” (Photo by Tim Harris)
Farm project
In 1999, a farmer donated 100 hectares (247 acres) of land to St. Albert’s. Elizabeth’s father had been a farmer, and she knew about crops, seeds, and fertilizers, so she embarked on the farm project. Crops include greens, peanuts, mealie meal, carrots, beans, and tomatoes. The project provides food for hospital patients and families. Surplus is sold to pay the farm workers. Dr. Julia also maintains a large herb garden here. She uses the plants for herbal medicines and seasonings
Water project
In 2004, several years of drought was drying up the boreholes that provide water to St. Albert’s hospital and the entire mission. To keep the hospital open, Elizabeth had an earthen dam built that blocks a seasonal stream on the hospital’s farm land. The resulting reservoir should provide an alternative water supply for the hospital and mission.
The dam is about two tenths of mile long. As shown below, it stands about 10 feet above the water line.
The holding tank and waterline were completed in 2006. But Zimbabwe’s continuing political and economic decline, with inflation rates of 3,600 percent and rising, have slowed progress, and installation of a water purification system remains to be completed.
