The Nairobi County Government has launched the County Health Promoters Program which aims at improving healthcare accessibility and community well-being.
The pioneering move promises to revolutionize healthcare delivery in Nairobi County and empower its citizens with better access to essential health services amid the expected El Nino season.
Nairobi County Governor Johnson Sakaja speaking on Monday at Uhuru Park revealed that the launch of the Health Promoters Program marks a turning point in healthcare management, fostering a new era of community engagement and proactive healthcare delivery.
Equally, the transformative initiative promises to enhance the lives of Nairobi County’s inhabitants and pave the way for a healthier, more prosperous future.
Sakaja noted that the County Health Promoters (CHP) are key in health delivery services and are also influential citing that some of the Nairobi Members of the County Assembly were formerly working in the defunct city council health sector
“The same MCAs are the ones who helped me pass a budget that allowed the County health promoters to gain a stipend of Sh3,500 in this year’s budget,” said Sakaja.
Sakaja said it was during his tenure as a Senator alongside other Senate members who are now governors that they fought for county health promoters to be recognized and be given stipends emphasizing that they had been ignored for years.
On the same note, the governor lauded the President’s promise to have the national government work with the county governments to combine efforts to try and increase the amount of stipends per person.
Sakaja observed that his government was the first in many years to compensate the Nairobi county health promoters from free working to monthly earnings as well as extending the same efforts to the introduction of the “Green Army”, a team of youth hired to clean the city.
“The last time these officers were hired in Nairobi was when I was born. Meaning most of them are now aging and they are very few, now with the 2,500 and the 1,000 who are about to be commissioned, this city will go back to being the green city under the sun that it used to be,” Sakaja noted.
The Nairobi County Chief argued the CHPs alongside the Green Army to collectively collaborate to clean the city and encourage health-wise work on the ground to ensure that his manifesto agenda was met.
He urged the public to welcome the community health promoters when they visit their homes in order to make their work easier.
In this regard, the governor asked fellow governors to include county health promoter programmes in their budgets as a way of recognizing HCP.
He further promised workers that they would be recognized and their stipend would be increased.
By Kamau Maina and Samson Nkooma
