DPRPP
Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Pamoja Program
Disability Prevention and Community-Based Rehabilitation program (CBR) for children and youngsters with disabilities is now three years old in Karagwe District of Kagera Region in Tanzania. It started as efforts of CBIDO and communities in first four pilot wards of (total population: 69267 total identified CYWD: 1,041 (1.5%) previously commonly known as Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Services (DPRS). In October 2023 evaluation was done to see how the project is implemented, we realized that the program was positively impacting the communities, there were high level of cooperation and readiness from both communities and government leaders, it missed the sustainability part, due to this practical evaluation we realized that the program needs to be implemented in direct cooperation between three parties Community, Government, CBIDO. It is with this historical background where the government and community came up with a collaborative program now called PAMOJA PROGRAM (Together we can) this program is based on the World Health Organization’s CBR Matrix and is run by the government and community.
DPRPP GOAL is to include all PWDS with a focus on CYWD within the society as full accepted members, with access to education, health services, social protection & inclusion and livelihood within Tanzania, via a collaboration between district governments with technical and financial support from CBIDO for sustainability.
The program doesn’t only work to facilitate the topics mentioned up here, but also to ensure a favorable political, legal, institutional and cultural environment. After some years of pilot program implementation in some Wards in Karagwe District, we realized how CBR is required and needed in the rest of the wards, other districts of Kagera region and other regions of Tanzania in General.
- Strengthening the existing healthcare service delivery in the dispensaries (in a respective ward) particularly maternal and childcare to prevent birth defects and (childhood) disabilities focussed on the 1st 1000 days. (PREVENTION PROGRAM).
- Increasing community awareness on disability-inclusive societies, in order to improve access to healthcare (including rehabilitation), education, livelihood opportunities and participation in social life for people with a disability by strengthening local systems in respective wards.
We will use an app which is being implemented in 2022, to be able to register all pregnant women in a certain village or ward and to be able to make sure they attend antenatal, delivery and post natal check ups, vaccinations and check on the child health.
Also all parents and children with a disability will be registered and the app will be used to track their progress, by doing all assessments within the app using general holistic entry and exit assessment and for each intervention an assessment based on KPI’s (key performance indicators).
This app will be used to follow individual clients but will be also a great tool for monitoring and evaluation for internal and external use to our donors, the government and other stakeholders. Which will help us with our financial system of bookkeeping to kbnow unit costs for each intervention and help us to improve the quality and lower the costs
In each ward we will support the upgrade of at least one dispensary with:
– a lab with microscope for simple blood, urine and stool tests
– an ultrasound to make sure at least each pregnant women gets one scan before due date to know the position to know if a normal delivery is possible if not referral to hospital.
– a therapy room CBIDO will be able to do physio, occupational therapy, nutrition consults and counselling, and to be able to train local staff on doing the same.