More designs on change: What do health and nutrition staff think?

At the end of last year, we completed our project, run with our partner KZF, supporting rural health centres with Kit Yamoyo: training staff, boosting supply and monitoring change. Other findings from the KYTS-ACE Project can be found here: colalife.org/category/kyts-ace-findings It was the first time that rural health centres across some of the most vulnerable and […]

The public sector version of Kit Yamoyo goes everywhere

Mother with GRZ co-pack outside Chinsali Urban Clinic Sep-15 was a turning point to our work in Zambia. In this month the first batch of government-branded Kit Yamoyo packs were delivered to Medical Stores Limited (MSL), the public sector medicines distributor in Zambia, for distribution to health facilities in the 14 districts facing the biggest […]

Chinsali 27-Sep-16 – the tale of two health centres

This is a story is about attention to detail and demonstrates the fine line between success and failure. On Tuesday last week (27-Sep-16) I was in Chinsali District. I worked here from 1985 to 1989 and so I was returning after 27 years. All my old haunts were still there but so much has happened […]

Kit Yamoyo adverts now in place on MSL trucks

Image credit: Dr Bonface Fundafunda This is something we never thought would happen. The national distributor of medicines for the public sector in Zambia, Medical Stores Limited (MSL), is now carrying adverts for Kit Yamoyo on their trucks. This will complement the roll-out of Kit Yamoyo at Shoprite stores as Kit Yamoyo starts appearing on […]

Milestone agreement signed

  MSL’s Managing Director (Dr Fundafunda) and KZF’s Executive Director (Mr Msimuko) sign MOU This week (11-Nov-15) Medical Stores Limited (MSL), Zambia’s parastatal medicines distributor, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with our strategic, frontline partner, the Zambian NGO Keepers Zambia Foundation (KZF). As part of this agreement MSL will distribute 452,000 of the Government-branded ORS and Zinc […]

The COTZ Network Diagram

We are to be the subject of a Masters Thesis looking at social innovation, complexity theory and leadership. Don’t ask me anymore because I don’t know but it does sound very interesting and I am sure that what is produced will add to our understanding of how to help others in other countries pick up […]

The pre-trial bureaucratic phase

  Apologies for the lack of blog posts lately. There is a lot happening but, if I’m frank, a lot of it is not very exciting. We are in a necessary, but rather dull bureaucratic phase as we try to get the last bits and pieces in place to start the trial. We have confirmation […]

PedZinc samples arrive from Tanzania

Regular readers will remember a mini-panic that we had back last month when we visited the Medical Stores Limited (MSL) warehouse to find the type of Zinc supplements we wanted but packed in boxes of 100 tablets (10 blister packs of 10 tablets each) – see the picture below. This is a real problem for […]

Zambia Diary | Day 9 and 10, Visit 3 | Visit round-up

I’m writing this sat at my desk back at home if front of a boarded up window which someone put a brick through while we were away. Luckily, it looks like they were just after the keys for the scooter that belonged to our house minder who was round at the Co-op at the time. […]

Zambia Diary | Day 8, Visit 3 | From lowlight to highlight

On Tuesday night (17/5/11) I was worried when a potential problem was revealed to me that I hadn’t even thought about. Fortunately, we don’t get a lot of unpleasant surprises in ColaLife because we have been kicking the concept around our thousands of supporters for three years and this has meant that a lot of the issues […]