Why 9,000 health volunteers will be retrained

Community health volunteers across the country will be re-trained on new standards that now focus on disease prevention. 

The Health ministry last week launched the CHVs training and certification guidelines to ensure they acquire the necessary competencies to deliver health services at household levels.

Currently, Kenya has more than 9,000 CHVs working across the 47 counties are seen as the backbone to the attainment of Universal health coverage. 

The CHVs are tasked with making home visits to deliver health promotion messages and establish protocols for Community-Based Maternal and Newborn Health among others.

They are supervised by Community Health Extension Workers and operate within Community Health Units encompassing about 100 households.

The ministry launched guidelines that aim to promote disease prevention rather than treating diseases at later stages.

The guidelines developed by the ministry in partnership with the county governments and other partners have adopted primary health care as an approach through which attainment of Universal Health Coverage is anchored.

According to Ag DG Patrick Amoth, primary healthcare emphasizes availing the basic package of essential health services and products required to promote health, prevent disease and manage illnesses closer to the people who need them.

“Primary health care will cover 80 per cent of an individual’s health needs during their life course. At its heart, primary healthcare is about preempting care for the people and having a focus on prevention rather than simply treating specific diseases,” Amoth said.

Some of the documents launched by the ministry on Thursday include the Primary Healthcare Network Guidelines, the community health committee training curriculum, the community master Health unit list and the community health roadmap.

Others include the community scorecard for social accountability for primary health care, the community health volunteers training and certification guidelines and the advocacy, communication, and community engagement framework for primary healthcare in Kenya.

The guidelines are aimed to lay a framework on which the country can enhance efforts to improve access to primary healthcare services in Kenya.

“Successful implementation of this policy documents will create avenues for engaging with communities in improving their health, as well as tailor effective communication on preventive and promotive health,” the DG noted.

The primary healthcare network guidelines for instance will support healthcare systems through engaging communities and giving them a voice in the healthcare services they receive, linking them to facilities to help them remain healthy, prevent diseases and manage emergencies through a quick and fast referral system.

As the country gears towards Universal Health Coverage, the government has acknowledged that the group will hold a key role in the attainment of the programme, hence the need to entrench them in the payment structure.

CHV work is purely voluntary as stipulated in the community health services motto “our health our responsibility”.

According to the World Health Organisation, primary health care is the most inclusive, equitable, cost-effective and efficient approach to enhance people’s physical and mental health, as well as social well-being.

Evidence of wide-ranging impact of investment in PHC continues to grow around the world, particularly in times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

"PHC is also critical to make health systems more resilient to situations of crisis, more proactive in detecting early signs of epidemics and more prepared to act early in response to surges in demand for services," WHO says.

The global health agency notes that scaling up primary health care interventions across low and middle-income countries could save 60 million lives and increase average life expectancy by 3.7 years by 2030.

At the UN high level UHC meeting in 2019, countries committed to strengthening primary health care. WHO recommends that every country allocate or reallocate an additional one per cent of GDP to PHC from government and external funding sources