Registered Community Health Promoters (CHP) in Nyamira County will start receiving stipends for their service of providing primary health care in a bid to achieve universal health coverage.
Primary healthcare stakeholders are happy with the decision, terming it long overdue because primary health promoters play a key role in ensuring that the most vulnerable households get basic healthcare advice.
The healthcare advice offered includes access to medication and medical facilities. The CHP also offers first aid services to patients when the need arises, before referring them to health facilities.
Dr. Geofrey Nyambuti, Director of Medical Services, confirmed to stakeholders that they have embarked on a vigorous training exercise for community health promoters in the entire county so that they can be able to provide universal comprehensive healthcare to achieve the government’s agenda of Afya Bora Mashinani.
“Our county has already received kits for all our registered community health promoters to enable them to execute their duties with ease once the programme is officially launched by the President on the 20th of October next month.” Director Nyambuti assured.
“This initiative is geared towards adopting supportive and innovative modern approaches in disease identification, monitoring, surveillance, early warning, and research and information dissemination for efficient service delivery to clients seeking health care services.
Mr. David Soi, a Public Health Officer (PHO) from Bomet County, while training Nyamira County stakeholders in primary health care, emphasised that primary healthcare is an essential service, which is why the government has decided to set aside resources so that those who provide the primary health care services get a stipend to motivate them in their selfless service to humanity.
“The approach the health promoters will use in executing their duties is promoting disease prevention mechanisms, offering integrated and comprehensive service, and ensuring the service is people-centred, serving all clients equally and efficiently. This approach will boost demand for health care services and improve awareness to create a positive attitude towards health care-seeking behaviours.
Ms. Celestine Gambo, a cluster lead in AMREF, elaborated that the government has put in place legislation at various levels of execution to avoid clashing and overlapping service provision, and a bill to fund primary healthcare has already been drafted to enhance service provision and strengthen coordination during implementation.
“The key role of county stakeholders in primary healthcare is to coordinate, support, warrant equitable resource mobilisation and distribution, monitor how care and service are prioritised, and ensure impartial distribution of healthcare workers, as per the level of care within the county,” Ms. Gambo listed.
Dr. Nyambuti urged the stakeholders to drum up support and ownership of health and encourage seamless coordination between community health promoters and their clients to ensure healthcare service delivery in the county is efficient.
Healthcare is one of the president’s five pillars of his Bottom-up Economic Transformative Agenda (BETA) that he is using to build this country’s economy to higher levels. The other four are affordable housing, agriculture, micro, small, and medium enterprises, digital superhighways, and creative industries.
By Deborah Bochere
