Community Health Volunteers will now be referred to as Community Health Promoters.
This was agreed upon in a meeting held between President William Ruto and the Council of Governors on Monday.
In the meeting, it was also agreed that the CHVs will be provided with standardised kits to undertake their health promotion work at the lowest levels in the communities.
Ruto acknowledged that the CHVs are a critical component of the delivery of health since health is a devolved function.
“We are going to begin from the bottom in our UHC plan. The critical and important unit is at the bottom of the pyramid under a community health promoter,” he said.
It was agreed that the national and county governments would co-sponsor the CHPs.
“We have agreed with the counties that we are going to standardise the remuneration of these CHPs and we also need to standardise the kits that will be made available for them to use in the service that they will be undertaking in every village,” Ruto said.
“I have committed that the national government is going to provide all the kits for all the 90,000 CHPs and we are already preparing for the delivery of the kits.”
CHVs play an integral part in promoting the uptake of healthcare services at community levels.
This includes maternal and child health, nutrition, family planning, and disease prevention and management.
They have also been instrumental in increasing health literacy and promoting healthy behaviors in their communities.
Last week, the Ministry of Health said it will work with counties to have CHVs identify men and women wasting away in alcoholism.
The ministry said the problem is rampant in the Mt Kenya area, although independent studies show it is worse in other counties such as Nyamira, Isiolo and Kajiado.
