Empowering the community through community health workers

By Rose Ndolo, National Nutrition Coordinator; World Vision Kenya
 
Rose Ndolo is the nutrition sector lead for World Vision Kenya. Prior to joining the team in 2010, she worked for eight years as a nutrition practitioner within civil society organisations.

"Last week I took a trip to Kuria East in Nyanza Province, which has the highest under-five mortality rate in the country (149 per 1,000 live births). I interacted with six different community groups ranging from men, grandmothers, younger mothers and community health workers.

"This personal experience confirmed to me that communities have an inherent capacity to rise up to meet the challenges that they encounter in daily life. All the groups that I met with were enthusiastic in sharing experiences of the child health related services that community health workers are offering to them.

"After continuous refresher training over the last ten months, community health workers have been conducting door to door visits to pregnant women, and importantly educating them about antenatal care. The community members told me that now more women are going to health clinic during pregnancy, following the advice of their community health workers.

"What is also important to notes is that these community health workers in turn follow up with the pregnant women to ensure they deliver in a health facility under the care of a skilled health worker, and that their children receive required immunizations.

"The highlight of the week for me was to see men engaged in a one hour discussion on maternal and child health. At the end of one of these discussions, a relatively quiet man in the group asked if I could continue to educate them on the best way to ensure that their children grow up healthy.

"This experience was not new to me but it did help me to realise that by empowering community members it is possible to actively involve everyone in reducing child deaths due to preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. As this experience in Kenya demonstrates, empowered community health workers have a significant impact in sensitizing communities to seek out and demand required health services to ensure a better future for their children."