Community Health Worker project

Late last year saw the launch of our Community Health Worker Program which was set up thanks to medical volunteer Dr Tim Thornton who spent 3 months working at our Lifeline Clinic.

  

The main aim of this project is to teach communities how to improve their own health by looking out for basic symptoms and treating them accordingly. We do this by training an individual in the community. Tim identified 5 communities that he thought would benefit from a Community Health Worker and within these communities he found 9 people to train up. These people are all San and all women. 

 So far we have taught them some basic health skills such as: 

• Identifying people who may have TB, (i.e. those with a cough for 3 weeks) and how to collect their sputum so it can be sent off for diagnosis
• How to treat diarrhoea
• How to recognise pneumonia
• How to treat burns and wounds 
• Identifying malnourished children by measuring their arm circumference
• Checking the children have had all their immunisations.

We want to specifically address Goal 4 of the United Nations Millennium Development which is to Reduce Child Mortality. Three major causes of death in children under 5 in the developing world are diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles.  Malnutrition also greatly increases the chances of dying from diarrhoea, pneumonia or measles.  By showing the community the correct early management of diarrhoea we can hopefully reduced mortality from diarrhoea.  Also by educating people on how to recognise pneumonia and encouraging mothers to take their children to a clinic early on so they can get antibiotics we can also reduce deaths from pneumonia. Immunising children against disease will also help.

Once a week our Doctor will visit one of the groups of health care workers so we can check their log book, discuss any problems they have or any patients they may have found and teach them something else. 

This year we will be looking at strengthening our community health worker project which was launched at the end of 2011 with ongoing training and support.