Reier nursing student clinic

I have a little example of something that actually worked but it’s not a long term thing. But it was something that just happened so that’s why I’m quite interested in it. And we had done this workshop with some people in East Africa. And there was a team of people from Zimbabwe who had come in and they were concerned because their nursing students in the nursing schools were dropping out because they were pregnant all the time. Now these are the nurses that are going to be going out into the field and offering family planning later on, but they weren’t getting services, and so they went back and said, “Well we’re going to try to do something like an adolescent-friendly program in the nursing schools.”

And it was about, I guess, a year ago, and I was just in Zimbabwe and without any funds, additional funds or anything, the students themselves have set up a small clinic in the dorms where they sleep because even though there was a, there were services in the hospital where they’re being trained, there were no; they didn’t want to go there. There was nobody that really could pay attention, you know, to their needs. And here the students themselves are offering the services, the supplies are coming from the hospital clinic, but they’re being offered in there.

And now, I met some of the head; the students that were running the program, and they’re really champions. They talk extremely well about the program, and now they’re meeting with other nursing schools so that they can start a program in their own places. And so, hopefully it will last. We’ll see. But it was really a nice, kind of, immediate impact of a regional meeting which sometimes, you know, we have lots or regional meetings, people make lots of plans, and we often don’t really see anything else happening.