Under 5’s Clinic& Nutrition Clinic

i4Life provide health and nutrition services to the Linda community near to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. This clinic serves a catchment area of approximately 80,000 people with varying levels of impoverishment. We are in a strong position to support the surge in the acute nutritional needs of the vulnerable under 5s through our pop-up clinic.

Malnourished children are actively identified by community health workers (CHWs) who have been recruited and trained by i4Life specialists to screen all the under 5 children in the community for malnutrition. All children who are identified with malnutrition are referred to the Primary Healthcare Centre, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, where there is a structured weekly clinic for monitoring the progress and provision of supplementary feed for the malnourished child for a defined period of time. The CHWs also assist in Under 5s clinics in which up to 400 children can attend on a rotational basis receiving important nutritional input.

In addition, CHWs provide vital community outreach, education and counselling for mothers and the community in the prevention and management of malnutrition and other diseases and conditions such as HIV and epilepsy. This is part of i4Life’s community cascade model of mentorship where nutritional clinical skills are passed from qualified nutritionists to CHWs to vulnerable mothers and children.

As well as achieving positive nutrition outcomes for children under 5 in the Linda catchment, the i4Life nutrition clinic, in partnership with the University of Zambia (UNZA), offers supervised practicum and internships for qualifying nutritionists. This is fulfilling an important gap in the skills training of nutritionists in Zambia as opportunities for hands on learning at community level are not well established. i4Life @ Neri is recognised as a centre of best practice providing capacity building across the nutrition system including national health, district health offices, health centres and community health structures as well as supporting formal training of nutritionists in higher level institutions.

Furthermore, since 2011, i4Life has facilitated the mutual transfer of knowledge between Ireland and Zambia which has supported over 210 experienced health professionals sharing their knowledge and gaining valuable experience with the i4Life team, University Teaching Hospital (UTH), University of Zambia (UNZA), and the Ministry of Health (MoH).