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Kabanga community health initiative

This is part of its community relations strategy to engage with local communities and is in line with Xstrata’s Sustainable Development Standard on Health and Occupational Hygiene.

The project is currently in the pre-feasibility stage, with an active exploratory programme and 500 employees on site.

One of the main components of the Kabanga Community Health Initiative is a three-pronged malaria programme focusing on education, prevention and treatment. Malaria is both the leading cause for patient visits to health facilities and for deaths in Tanzania. The malaria programme is focused on the four wards located around the project, each of which consists of three to five villages with a total population of 70,000 people.

The education component creates awareness of the risks of malaria and then works to change the behaviour of the local stakeholders, in particular the local community, using Theatre for Development techniques.

Kabanga has engaged a local NGO to train six selected artists from each ward in the Theatre for Development techniques. Following a ten week training programme, which is currently under way, the artists will return to their wards and will prepare a theatre performance on malaria using the techniques learnt and based on extensive community research to determine the most appropriate means of communication. The production will involve active audience participation to stimulate discussion on the issues and to discover appropriate solutions. Following a tour of the production, the finale will be a large festival that incorporates all of the local stakeholders, including villagers, employees and contractors from the Kabanga project, government and local NGOs.

The second component of the malaria programme focuses on prevention, in partnership with the District Medical Office. This will involve the mass distribution of long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent bites from malaria-carrying mosquitoes, providing a minimum of two bed nets per household.

Longer-term sustainability programmes, in partnership with government, are also being investigated to be rolled out if the project progresses to the feasibility and then construction stages. These include programmes to build capacity in health services at the village level.

The third component of the malaria programme, is treatment, which is currently at the planning stage. Kabanga is investigating a number of options to provide health support, counselling, diagnosis and treatment. Kabanga is also currently investigating an appropriate means to carry out a needs assessment for this final phase.

A monitoring and evaluation programme is being introduced for the programme to track its progress and monitor reductions in new cases of malaria as part of the overall programme.