Mobile clinics provide critical community-based reproductive health services for rural women, including antenatal care that can prevent fatal complications and provide a solid foundation for infant health; postnatal services to connect mothers and infants to care during the critical early postpartum months; family planning services that are key to adolescent and young women’s health and ability to control their future; screening for diseases that disproportionately impact women in Malawi including STIs, HIV and Cervical Cancer; and health education that can empower women to understand and control their and their families health. Mobile clinics’ integrated services create a one-stop-shop for rural women, allowing them to seek care for their own health and their children’s health in one visit.

To find the remaining pockets of untreated HIV positive people and protect those most vulnerable, GAIA also conducts youth friendly health service days to ensure adolescent girls and young women – the highest proportion of new HIV infections – have access to sexual reproductive health and testing services; and moonlight outreach clinics for female sex workers and their clients. Under PEPFAR’s Ana Patsogolo activity, GAIA linked OVCs and adolescent girls and young women living with HIV to prevention education, testing and treatment, social support and wrap-around health services to improve treatment initiation and adherence to ensure they thrive. GAIA’s Orphans and Vulnerable Children program provides school supports, hygiene supplies, and food supplements for orphan headed households, enabling them to remain in school, rather than dropping out to work. And mobile clinics’ integrated health services provide critical community-based care for people living with HIV who increasingly face the dual burden of HIV and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) of aging and infectious disease.

As resolved at the 2024 World Health Assembly, strong and resilient primary healthcare is an essential defense against health threats and key to preventing and responding to the health impacts of climate change. Mobile clinics provide this resilient primary healthcare infrastructure, and through their flexible nature, have allowed GAIA to be a critical partner to the government of Malawi during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the increasing number of climate change-exacerbated natural disasters.