60,000 people have benefited from Oxfam project

The British international humanitarian organization Oxfam has completed a five-year project, "Development of healthy communities through responsible local government." On this occasion, the organization held a conference on Friday, where it shared the experience of creating a model of "primary health care" (PHC).

"We believe that PHC should be accessible to all. The project was conducted in connection with the fact that socially vulnerable groups suffer from a lack of or low level of PHC," said the director of Oxfam in Azerbaijan, Shovket Alizadeh.

The project has helped 49 communities: 23 in Barda, 13 in Tartar, 5 in Goranboy, 4 in Oguz, and 4 in Yevlakh. Thus, the results of the project benefited more than 60,000 people.

Health centers in each of the 49 communities were equipped with medical equipment and provided with 80 types of medicine. In 21 locations, they restored and did construction work; in 12 villages they restored water supply and sanitation.

One of the goals was to create PHC in 49 communities.

This model helps families by pre-payment of a very small sum to receive medicine and primary care.

Surveys have shown that in the communities where the project was implemented, the cost of families declined from 148.1 to 64.2 manat. At the same time, for families not covered by the project, the cost of health care rose from 127.2 to 2,345 manats.

The project was funded by the EU, Oxfam, Medicor Fund and was implemented in partnership with local NGOs.  -06C-