By Aden Hazi

With funding from the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), Save the Children is implementing drought recovery emergency response in Garissa County. The first activity of the response was a training for 130 community health volunteers (CHVs) in Ijara, Fafi and Hulugho sub-counties on treatment of acute malnutrition which covers mass screening  of children for malnutrition, and referral of malnutrition cases; defaulter tracing of project beneficiaries and integrated management of acute malnutrition (IMAM).

This was to equip the CHVs with the necessary skills, knowledge and capacity of undertaking nutrition screening and managing malnutrition cases during community outreaches besides mobilization. The most active CHVs were selected for a 3 days thorough training by certified facilitators from Ministry of Health at their sub-counties of residence. The methodologies adopted during the training were lecturing, projection, illustrations, group discussions and role play. The multiple methodologies used were to ensure the in-depth understanding of the training concepts by the CHVs. The average post-test score by the CHVs after the training was 97%.

Since then, the CHVs are now strong pillar during community outreaches. The communities are well mobilized and informed well in advance about outreaches and this has lowered the rate of defaulters.

Currently community health is affected by the scarcity of health workers since the government withdrew non-local health workers from rural health facilities due to insecurity.  CHVs are stepping up to ensure continuity of services in the community and encouraging community outreaches.

Ubah Digale, one of the trained CHV from Ruqa village, takes an active role during community outreaches since the training. Ubah whose role use to be mobilizing the community for the outreaches can now provide a defined package of health promotion and services at the community level. She can now contribute to improving community health in many waysbyscreening people(children, pregnant and lactating mothers) for malnutrition, referring complicated malnutrition cases to link health facilities, making follow-up on beneficiaries that defaulted from the outreach programs, providing health education and conducting nutrition.

Since then, the CHVs are now strong pillar during community outreaches. The communities are well mobilized and informed well in advance about outreaches and this has lowered the rate of defaulters.

Currently community health is affected by the scarcity of health workers since the government withdrew non-local health workers from rural health facilities due to insecurity.  CHVs are stepping up to ensure continuity of services in the community and encouraging community outreaches

Ubah Digale, one of the trained CHV from Ruqa village, takes an active role during community outreaches since the training. Ubah whose role use to be mobilizing the community for the outreaches can now provide a defined package of health promotion and services at the community level. She can now contribute to improving community health in many ways by screening people(children, pregnant and lactating mothers) for malnutrition, referring complicated malnutrition cases to link health facilities, making follow-up on beneficiaries that defaulted from the outreach programs, providing health education and conducting nutrition surveillance. Ubah, being a resident of Ruqa village knows all the beneficiaries of the program and has been able to maintain a defaulter rate of zero. 

“The training has given us the best opportunity we need, we are now helping our communities with the skills we acquired. With this capacity we can ensure efficiency of outreach services.” narrated by Ubah.

The trained CHVs became more resourceful and better coordinated to ensure optimal health services delivery in the community.

 “Equipping CHVs with the necessary skills has helped the services to reach grass root level. We now have no defaulters in almost all our outreach sites and cases of malnutrition are now well reported, followed and managed as result locally available people with skills,” said Abdiaziz Elmi, Sub-county Nutrition Officer adding that CHVs are the most useful structures when conducting outreach services.