The pilot project to pay home visits to families with children younger than three to assess the physical, social and psych-emotional state of these by medical assistants from four regions of the country turned out to be efficient and the time is now opportune for extending it nationwide. This is the conclusion reached by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection, which, in a response to an inquiry made by IPN News Agency, said the initiative is supported by health professionals too.
A number of 175 medical workers were involved in the testing of the reviewed program of home visits and of the instruments designed within the project. These learned how to counsel the family and to identify, besides medical problems, social problems as well and to notify specialists of these and help the families in difficulty.
Adelina Celac, head of the Donduseni Health Center, said ten medical assistants of their institution visited families, talked to the parents, supervised the children and filled out monitoring forms. “I think it is a good program as it envisions more often visits paid by medical assistant to families with small children and, respectively, more time for talking to mothers and fathers. It is an opportunity to communicate and teach parents how to look after children,” stated Adelina Celac. She noted that some of the families know how to care for children, while others need to be trained and such a program is welcome, especially for families from rural areas.
Even if they admit that the project is useful, some of the involved medical assistants invoke the lack of time for visiting all the families with small children and offering them the necessary support. “The medical assistant has to walk to reach the opposite part of a town and this takes an hour sometimes, in the afternoon, when not much time remains until the end of the working hours. Thus, the assistants work over hours,” said Ala Cebotari, senior specialist in mother and child assistance at the Drochia Health Center “Anatolie Manziuc”, who transmitted also the opinion of mates taking part in the program. The Drochia Health Center owns a motor vehicle, but this is used in emergencies only.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection, the results of the pilot project show that a number of preparatory stages are needed to extend the program nationwide, such as the training of medical workers and outfitting of the primary medical assistance institutions with the necessary equipment and instruments, and these will be launched in 2018. The pilot project was implemented in October 2015 – December 2017 in four pilot regions, namely Donduseni, Drochia, Glodeni and Balti municipality.
