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Bringing health care services closer to beneficiaries through its mobile clinic, Service Yezu Mwiza allows beneficiaries to access quality care close to their homes, but also this strategy ensures better care in terms of medical, psychological and socio-economic.

Every morning at 8:30 am, the vehicle reserved for the mobile clinic takes the direction of one of the 16 sites where SYM mobile clinic provides care to the beneficiaries. On board this vehicle, a medical kit and a team made up of a doctor for consultations, a laboratory technician to carry out the paraclinical examinations requested by the doctor, nurses to take the vital parameters distribute drugs and transcribe them into follow-up notebooks for the next appointment, the health mediator and the person in charge of monitoring Income Generating Activities (IGA).

When the multidisciplinary team arrives at the site, they find the beneficiaries who have come to the appointment. Activities always begin with a health education session where the mediator conducts therapeutic reinforcement dialogues. During the medical consultations, when the doctor diagnoses illnesses requiring specialized care, he schedules them for specialized consultations that are paid for by Service Yezu Mwiza.

One of the beneficiaries having her viral load tested during mobile clinic

According to Dr Gaston IRANKUNDA, responsible of SYM’s mobile clinic, satisfaction is total: “Thanks to the mobile clinic, the majority of SYM beneficiaries are stable, opportunistic infections are rare, the HIV-related mortality rate is very low and there is a clear improvement in the living conditions of the beneficiaries as they benefit from the full-service package including medical, psychological and socio-economic management”, he says.

For some of the beneficiaries interviewed, SYM is a divine blessing and they greatly appreciate its actions in the community. They specify that “with the mobile clinic we have access to free care and sometimes to medicines for the treatment of other pathologies other than HIV and its opportunistic infections, whereas if we go to other structures we are obliged to pay the consultation fees and buy the prescribed medicines”.

It is not a secret that HIV has killed millions of people around the world, leaving families (widows and orphans) vulnerable. Service Yezu Mwiza, by initiating IGAs, wants to restore dignity to these families who, sometimes are discriminated, abandoned to their own, therefore no longer able to meet their needs given that a family member who was supposed to take care of them left early because of HIV, helping them to undertake small activities that could enable them to take care of themselves without waiting for outside help.

Burundi's vision is to eradicate HIV by 2030. To achieve this goal, should this mobile clinic strategy be continued or replaced by another?