Empowering Community Health Promoters

Community Health Works (CHWs) is an important network of individuals who spearhead Universal Health Care Coverage through dissemination health education and awareness to families who may not otherwise have access to health services/information due to social or economic reasons like cultural beliefs, poor infrastructure, illiteracy, disability and lack of initiative.

In 2018, HopeCore recruited 97 Community Health Workers who underwent 6 days training with a focus on the following areas:

 Day 1: Introduction, Roles and responsibilities of CHWs, qualities 

            of a community leader, communication skills, counselling skills.

Day 2: First Aid and Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)

Day 3: Preconception care, focused antenatal care, individual birth plans, breastfeeding, family     

            Planning.

Day 3: Nutrition, malnutrition, growth monitoring, deworming, and Vitamin A

Day 4: Introduction to sexual and reproductive health, STIs, HIV/AIDS & PMTCT, tuberculosis,

            youth counselling and referrals, value clarification, data collection.

Day 5: Malaria, diarrhoea, oral rehydration therapy, coughs and colds, skin and eye infections

Day 6: Water, hygiene, and sanitation, data application training (Comcare).

We conduct a pre-test and post-test for the CHWs to determine their knowledge before and after the training. The trained CHWs are equipped with Android phones which has installed Commcare application, they are then trained on how to use the application in conducting household visits, health education and how to input data.

 Additionally, we hold monthly refresher training for the CHWs to ensure they are constantly engaged in continuous learning processes hence increasing their knowledge. 

In 2018, the CHWs managed to conduct 4,991 home visits with 2,819 children under 5 years they have offered health education to over 14,500 community members. The CHWs supplemented 2,499 children with vitamin A. The CHWs also identify cases of malnourished children and the children who have not to go immunization.

The Community Health Workers have also been able to help reduce cases of social isolation among patients eg stigma cases among HIV positive patients, provide grassroots health education in their villages, monitor pregnant women all through the pregnancy cycle more so by ensuring that they attend at least 4 antenatal clinics. The CHWs have made a huge impact in implementing universal health coverage.

Our target for 2019 is to expand the coverage of our services by increasing the number of Community Health Workers to 200. If funds are available, we shall equip all the 200 Community Health Workers with blood pressure measuring machines. These would enable the CHWs to monitor the ever-rising cases of blood pressure in their villages and make referrals to our facility.