page_title: Clinic
section_title: Mobile clinics
hierarchical_section_title: Clinic / Large outpatient clinics / Mobile clinics
caption_attribution_description: English: In Sadah in the north and in Taiz in the centre of Yemen, the fighting makes it dangerous for families to go to health centres to get children vaccinated, for expecting mothers to get check ups or for children to be treated for malnutrition and other illnesses. I could see this on the way to Follah in Sadah governorate, along the main roads were mile after mile of bombed out buildings. When we branched off on to dirt tracks into the small wadi the destruction was much less but there were also no government health centres. In Follah we were providing with the local health service a mobile clinic for families, it offered vaccination, nutrition, and medicines for common childhood illnesses. A very popular and appreciated service.
context_page_description: A clinic is a healthcare facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary healthcare needs of populations in local communities, in contrast to larger hospitals which offer specialised treatments and admit inpatients for overnight stays.
  Most commonly, the English word clinic refers to a general medical practice, run by one or more general practitioners, but it can also mean a specialist clinic. Some clinics retain the name "clinic" even while growing into institutions as large as major hospitals or becoming associated with a hospital or medical school.
context_section_description: Providing health services through mobile clinics provides accessible healthcare services to these remote areas that have yet to make their way in the politicized space. For example, mobile clinics have proved helpful in dealing with new settlement patterns in Costa Rica. Before foreign aid organizations or the state government became involved in healthcare, Costa Rica's people managed their own health maintenance and protection. People relied on various socio-cultural adaptations and remedies to prevent illnesses, such as personal hygiene and settlement patterns. When new settlements that sprang up along the coast became "artificial" communities, and due to lack of traditional home healing practices here, alternative methods such as mobile clinics had to be implemented in these communities for the protection and prevention of diseases. 
  A study done in rural Namibia revealed the health changes of orphans, vulnerable children and non-vulnerable children (OVC) visiting a mobile clinic where health facilities are far from the remote villages. Over 6 months, information on immunization status, diagnosis of anemia, skin and intestinal disorders, nutrition, dental disorders was collected and showed that visits to mobile clinics improved the overall health of children that visited regularly. It concluded that specified "planning of these programs in areas with similarly identified barriers may help correct the health disparities among Namibian OVC and could be a first step in improving child morbidity and mortality in difficult-to-reach rural areas." 
  Food supplementation in the context of routine mobile clinic visits also shows to have improved the nutritional status of children, and it needs further exploration as a way to reduce childhood malnutrition in resource-scarce areas. A cross-sectional study focussed on comparing acute and chronic undernutrition rates prior to and after a food-supplementation program as an adjunct to routine health care for children of migrant workers residing in rural communities in the Dominican Republic. Rates of chronic undernutrition decreased from 33% to 18% after the initiation of the food-supplementation program and shows that the community members attending the mobile clinics are not just passively receiving the information but are incorporating it and helping keep their children nourished.
caption: A mobile clinic run from a pickup truck in Yemen.
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