The department of health services in Nyamira County is conducting a 10-day retooling training to its Community Health Promoters (CHPs) to enhance their basic health service delivery within their communities.
The County director for primary health services, John Kimani while officially opening the training pointed out that CHPs are the first and critical health service providers in the health care service chain and should therefore be adequately informed because they play a crucial role in saving lives.
“CHPs interact directly and regularly with members of their households and communities and are best positioned to know the health status of their community members before they access our health facilities for medication. The department of health services therefore saw the need to organize this training to retool them on basic health care skills to be able to manage offering prompt basic health care service and relay reliable health related information to us from their communities,” Kimani stated.
He clarified that the initial strategy when community health service was introduced was in the spirit of volunteering. Community health service providers were not paid but motivated by being issued with free training on how to undertake their work, issued with bicycles to assist in mobility in the vast communities covered by few volunteers then.
“I challenge you to be efficient because you’ll be trained, and the county in collaboration with the national government is giving you a monthly stipend to appreciate your spirit of voluntary service and efforts of moving from one home to another to assess the health status of each household within your communities to ensure that people within our county are healthy and are well guided to promptly seek proper medical attention when they fall sick,” Mr. Kimani appealed.
Director Kimani thanked the support they got courtesy of a partnership with Our Lady of Perpetual Support (OLPS) for people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans organization to enable the plan of this training to finally be implemented. OLPS has been our key partner when handling communicable diseases like Tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS and malaria.
“This ten day training has been made possible by a partnership with OLPS and we have managed to train 120 Community Health Promoters (CHPs) who are in 4 raining centres in Tombe, Metamaywa, Nyamusi and Nyamira town.” Listed Kimani.
Mr. John June a representative from OLPS confirmed to KNA that they have been supporting community led projects specifically in Nyamira, Kisumu and Kericho counties with funding from global Fund.
“OLPS decided to support this training so that CHPs will be equipped with skills and basic requirements for community health work because they are key in assessing and giving information on health status in the community and can sometimes readily respond to health emergencies before the patients access the professional health practitioner at the health facility,” June said.
He revealed that through community health promoters, Nyamira County was ranked 3rd highest in reducing TB infections in 2022, 2nd highest in 2023 and hopeful to be ranked top in 2024 when the report will be officially released soon.
“Other than providing basic health care, the CHPs have been very instrumental in aiding achievement of one of the President’s Bottom up Economic Transformative Agenda (BETA) of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). CHPs are helping in registering citizens to the Social health Authority (SHA) platform to access medical insurance cover when seeking medication from hospitals. The OLPS representative highlighted.
He urged the CHP trainees to serve with the right attitude because they passed the integrity test from the community level to be approved for this noble responsibility.
“Government cannot pay the sacrifice you offer in ensuring that our people in rural communities and remote villages are in good health, regularly attend their clinics and take their medication as prescribed. You directly engage and advise communities on preventive mechanisms from contracting especially communicable diseases and the immediate feedback you send to the health facilities has enabled our people and department of health services to value your service and adopt healthy living lifestyles,” Mr. June appreciated.
By Deborah Bochere
