Community Health Digest 6th-10th March 2023

Community Health Digest 6th-10th March 2023

Weekly Digest 6th– 10th March 2023

Hello and welcome to the 1st edition of our weekly community health digest. We aim to curate weekly updates on community health activities locally and what to look out for in the coming week.

  1. AHAIC 2023

For the past week, social media has been abuzz with #AHAIC2023 following the 5th edition of the biennial conference that brought together diverse stakeholders from around the world to discuss successes, challenges, and opportunities for improving health outcomes in Africa.

The Covid-19 pandemic proved the need to have resilient health systems in preparedness for the next health threat. Inevitably, the global challenges of the next decade – climate change, conflict, and food insecurity – will have a ripple effect on Africa’s health and change our lives in unimaginable ways.

Dr Maureen Kimani, Head of the Division of Community Health highlighted the role of the community in building resilient health systems and how the success of future pandemics is pegged on the communities. She emphasized the need for government to take lead and onboard partnerships to ensure the programs put in place are well institutionalized within countries’ policies and prioritize the role of communities when making decisions that affect them directly.

Anthony Gitau of Johnson and Johnson acknowledged community health workers as the largest funders of the community health system. He lauded the commitments of the Kenyan Government to pay CHWs by matching counties’ efforts. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/health-science/article/2001467351/ruto-government-to-hire-100000-community-health-workers

Panel session on the impacts of Covid-19 on communities through resilient health systems at #AHAIC2023

Key takeaways from the plenary session on the critical role of CHWs in the Covid-19 response were:

  • Need to put communities at the centre of building resilient health systems and making policies that directly affect them.
  • Need for flexible funding that is responsive to real community needs.
  • Importance of documenting what is happening at the community level. This data when analyzed is used for decision-making, programming and advocacy.
  • Call to world leaders to pay CHWs what they deserve on a regular basis.

2. Community Scorecard Training- Nairobi County

Nairobi County rolled out training on the Community Scorecard across the county. As an essential element of the Kenya Community Health Strategy (2020-2025), social accountability has been integrated to respond to real communities’ needs and wants. The Kenya Community Scorecard for Primary Health Care was developed to promote greater community awareness of services and enhance their participation in management, accountability, oversight and satisfaction with services received in their health facilities.

Kicking off with a high-level meeting attended by the county’s CEC, Dr Anastasia Nyalita noted the importance of knowing where the county was in terms of service delivery to continue strengthening PHC. Facilitated by ALMA 2030, the sub-county teams had a 2-day training that later cascaded it to the 126 facilities in the first phase of evaluation.

3. International Women’s Day 2023

This year’s international women’s day theme was “DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality”. It was a call to explore the impact of the digital gender gap on widening economic and social inequalities. 

International Women’s Day also offers a chance to celebrate the work of women and celebrate their achievements. We celebrate the work of the female CHW workforce who comprise a large proportion of the CHW workforce. We applaud these phenomenal CHWs supported by Lwala Community Alliance for their efforts: https://lwala.org/caregiving-through-cooking-the-women-who-feed-lwala-community-hospital/

Lwala CHWs

For the coming week, be on the lookout for:

  1. Webinar on Tools & strategies to mobilize resources for Community Health hosted by Financing Alliance for Health.

When: 15th March 2023

Time: 3-4 PM EAT

Reserve your spot here: https://t.co/FMsw4JOsIB

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