Motorcycles to Technical Assistance: Abt Provides Sustainable Solutions to Community Organizations in Mozambique

Thanks to this initiative, there are significantly fewer patients with interrupted HIV treatment. Between September and December 2021, bikes helped community health workers reach 98 percent of HIV patients in their communities who had abandoned or interrupted their treatment. According to counselors in Sofala province—where interruptions to service dropped by almost 63 percent—these bike donations are enabling health workers to integrate new patients and ensure they maintain treatment.

Moving forward, ECHO is expanding its initiative to assess—and address—additional CBO needs, aiming to identify unique long-term challenges for which Abt can provide sustainable solutions. For example, many CBOs have expressed a need for harassment, ethics, and gender trainings that will build a solid cultural foundation for the organizations and strengthen their mission. Abt and our partners conducted assessments to learn exactly where each CBO’s strengths and weaknesses lie in areas of gender, management practices, ethics, communication, and more. In addition to delivering harassment and ethics trainings, we trained the trainers. Results have been gratifying; in one province, assessment scores before and after harassment and ethics trainings skyrocketed from 45 percent to 80 percent.

By using data to identify and provide both material and technical assistance, Abt continues to give Mozambique’s CBOs the tools and knowledge they need to improve HIV patients’ lives for years to come.