KENYA – Nakuru County Government in Kenya has partnered with the Ministry of Health, the World Vision Kenya and Global Fund to train 200 members of community health committees to enhance their service delivery capacity.
Nakuru County Government under Governor Lee Kinyanjui’s administration rolled out the training program for healthcare workers focused on maternal and child health, data collection methods and techniques and prevention as well as management of infectious diseases.
The national government and the international organizations partnered with Nakuru County to cover other areas during the training including resource mobilization, management of the County funds and implementation of the annual work plans.
In line with Kenya Community Health Policy 2020–2030 whose main goal is to empower individuals, families and communities to attain the highest possible standard of health by focusing on strengthening community health services
The partnership is in line with Kenya Community Health Policy 2020–2030 whose main goal is to empower individuals, families and communities to attain the highest possible standard of health by focusing on strengthening community health services.
The capacity building project seeks to help Nakuru County and Kenya in general in addressing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic whose prevention and control cannot be effective without properly qualified community health workers.
The capacity building interventions for health workers comes at a time when the County’s department of health is implementing an accelerated COVID-19 prevention campaign targeting control of virus transmission at the community level hence the need to entrench them in proper training initiatives.
The community capacity building activities saw the participation of members of health committees from all the 11 Sub Counties within Nakuru County in a step forward towards strengthening human resource in healthcare management at grassroots levels.
Moreover, community health committees play an important role in the improvement of community health and well-being by providing important links to primary healthcare services as well as delivery of basic health prevention and promotion services.
Nakuru County Director in charge of Administration and Planning Dr Benedict Osore stressed that the community health committee members are in turn expected to pass over knowledge and skills acquired during the training to community health volunteers operating in their respective sub-counties.
Dr Benedict Osore explained that accelerated COVID-19 prevention campaign involves health workers and community health volunteers who traverse the villages educating the public on the need to strictly adhere to all COVID-19 prevention measures while enforcing the prevention protocols.
“We shall continue working with development partners and other stakeholders to ensure that health volunteers are well equipped with adequate skills to do their work effectively including education on human rights when delivering health services to ensure equitable health coverage,” he added.
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